i LIBRARY OF CONGIIESS. t 

I « BR" I at ! 

$ .HH3 

# • // \y 4 

& & 

♦UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.! 









THE 



PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 



y^i 



THE 



PEARL OF GREAT PRICE, 



BY 

JAMES HALL, 

AUTHOR OF 

1 PEIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY," PUBLISHED IN 1853. 



v nV 

1867 

C' * 

' fy °f Washing 



NEW YORK: 

PUBLISHED FOR THE AUTHOR BY JAMES MILLER. 
1867. 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, hy 

JAMES MILLER, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the 
Southern District of New York. 



PREFACE. 



The Press being the only means or medium by which the 
author of this little work (now in the eighty-ninth year of his 
age) can communicate its contents to his kind, it is thus present- 
ed to them solely, as he humbly trusts, for their furtherance 
in the knowledge of God, and the consequent increase of 
their happiness. Believing assuredly that the evidence re- 
ferred to in the work clearly reveals the infinite truth that all 
mankind are, in the highest and most perfect sense, verily the 
offspring of God, by virtue of their oneness with his Son Jesus 
Christ, which oneness is that of the literal body with the 
head. All his readers to whom that evidence is satisfactory, 
will see that such filial and paternal relation between God 
and all mankind assures the latter of the same ultimate eter- 
nal glory as that of the Son of God himself — which also 
solves the problem of human destiny. It is hoped that the 
Scriptural and other testimonies referred to will alone be 
heeded, while the author and his style and method of com- 
position are forgotten. The joy and crown to which he 
aspires being his instrumentality in the extension of the 
knowledge of the paternal relation of God, and the headship 
relation of Christ, and their consequent love to all mankind, 
past, present, and to come. The necessary result being the 
eternal glorification of the whole humanity. 

J. H. 



THE 



PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 



CHAPTER I. 



I have for many years believed that the Gospel 
is the " pearl of great price ; " bearing the good news 
of the love of God given or extended to all man- 
kind in and through Christ, as the Scriptures abun- 
dantly show. But I had yet to learn from the same 
source that the relation to, and oneness of the hu- 
manity with Christ, and thereby their filial relation 
to God is the sole cause of that love. 

I now proclaim and set forth to the world the 
knowledge of the infinitely momentous fact of that 
relation as, above all else in the universe, the pearl 
of great price. A portion of the Scripture testi- 
mony in proof of that relation is the following, viz. : 
" Christ is the head of every man." 1 Cor. xi. 3. — 
He was " the first-born of every creature," or man. 
Col. i. 15-17. " We are members of his body, of his 
flesh, and of his bones." Eph. v. 30. — " Know ye 
not that your bodies are the members of Christ ? " 
1 Cor. vi. 15. — " Ye are the body of Christ and 
members in particular." 1 Cor. xii. 27. — " For both 






8 THE PEABL OF GREAT PRICE. 

he that sanctifieth and they who were sanctified are 
all of one." Heb. ii. 11. — " According as he hath 
chosen us in him before the foundation of the 
world." Eph. i. 4. — " According to his own pur- 
pose and grace, which was given us in him before 
. the world began." 2 Tim. i. 9. Other testimonies 
will be introduced, showing together with these, 
that the relation of all mankind to Christ is simply 
and actually the oneness of the literal body with 
the head. Also that Christ the head, and the hu- 
manity, constitute a whole species of spiritual be- 
ings of a heavenly and godlike nature and form, 
being together born of God " before the world be- 
gan." Christ the head — the spiritual Son of God — 
being " the brightness of his glory and the express 
image of his person — whom he appointed heir of all 
things, by whom also he made the world." 

That " bringing forth of the first and only be- 
gotten spiritual Son of God, and the members of 
his body, was the first of God's works," the begin- 
ning of his ways u before his works of old, when as 
yet he had not made the earth nor the heavens, nor 
the highest part of the dust of the world." Then 
the spiritual Son of God was with the Father, as 
"one brought up with him " and was " daily his 
delight rejoicing always before him." And when 
the Father prepared the heavens, the universe of 
worlds, when he gave to that universe (which exist- 
ed invisibly in himself) visibility, glory, and beau- 
ty, solely by the power of his will, the Son was 
there to express that will, as when he said " Let 
there be light, and there was light." For the Scrip- 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. U 

tures assure us " that the Son was with the Father 
in the beginning," and spake the word by which 
" everything was made that was made, 55 and that 
* God made the world by him, and that the world 
was framed by the word of God. 55 John i. 2 ; Heb. 
i. 2 ; Heb. xi. 3. Another Scripture informs us 
that Christ was " the first-born of every creature or 
man, 55 and that " he was before all things. 55 Col. i.15, 
16. Other testimonies affirm that " All things are 
of and through and to God, and in him all live 
and move, and have their being. 55 Heb. i. 2 ; Rom. 
xi. 3 ; Acts xvii. 28. 

The universe, therefore, is and was from eternity, 
of, and through, and in God. It was not made from 
nothing, nor produced from nonentity, as is popu- 
larly believed, neither can anything, much less a 
universe, come from nothing, or cause its own exist- 
ence. Whereas, the matter and substance of the 
universe existing in God could be so extended as to 
give it visible form and glory, and all life and mo- 
tion is a direct and perpetual out-going from God, 
and the universe so extended is still in God, inas- 
much as his presence or sphere is infinite extension, 
as boundless as space. 

The framing and formation of the worlds by 
God, and his spiritual Son, (who subsequently 
in due time became incarnate, as we shall show,) who 
willed and spoke into visible existence " the heav- 
ens and the earth and all the host of them in six 
days ; 55 forming man of the dust of the ground, 
God breathing into his nostrils the breath of life, 
and a living immortal soul. He (the man) being 
1* 



10 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

God's earthly Son and whom he constituted the 
head of a species of earthly beings consisting of 
bodies of flesh and blood and of immortal souls — 
Male and Female created he them (the species) and 
called their names Adam in the day that they were 
created, and thus were both the spiritual and heav- 
enly, the earthly and fleshly Sons of God each alike 
the head of a whole species, the former brought 
forth before, and the latter created on the sixth day 
after the world and time had begun. 

By the Scriptures referred to, it is thus shown 
that a spiritual and heavenly humanity or species 
constituent of the nature and body of Christ, was 
in and with him God-born, anterior to the creation 
of the earthly and fleshly humanity, constituent of 
the nature and body of Adam. We have now to 
show that the species forming the spiritual and 
heavenly, and the earthly and fleshly humanities, 
existed in their respective heads, Christ and Adam, 
in the mass, in an inert and unconscious state, and 
in that state were united and made one, each with 
a member of the other species ; the result of that 
union being one whole humanity whereof every 
member is a spirit, soul, and body. 

Saint Paul refers to this union of the spiritual 
with the earthly humanity as the cause of Christ's 
tasting death for every man, saying that inasmuch 
as the children were partakers of flesh and blood 
he (Christ) likewise took part of the same, that 
through death he might destroy death, and him 
that had the power of death, that is thedevi],and 
deliver them who through fear of death were all 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 11 

their lifetime subject to bondage. For he that 
sanctifieth and they who were sanctified are all of 
one ; and the same truth is clearly set forth in per- 
fect union and oneness of the spiritual Son of God 
with Jesus, at his baptism. It is in place here to 
refer to the whole book of nature to show, that it is 
the way of God to give existence to the many in 
one, that is, in the head of the species and by nat- 
ural generation and growth, to institute procreation 
throughout the animal and vegetable kingdoms; 
which generation and growth are but the extension 
of the species or kind from their mass and germinal 
existence in their heads to their constitutional ma- 
turity and size. 



12 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 



CHAPTEE n. 

We now resume our remarks and illustrations 
on the union and oneness of the spiritual and heav- 
enly with the earthly and fleshly humanity, existing 
both in Christ and in Adam, the earthly humanity 
being created male and female. "And God said it 
is not good for man to be alone, I will make an 
helpmeet for him, and God caused a deep sleep to 
fall upon Adam, and he took one of his ribs and 
closed up the flesh instead thereof, and the rib which 
God had taken from man made he a woman and 
brought her to the man." 

Thus it is seen that the whole humanity, earthly 
and heavenly, male and female, existed in the first 
man and woman, being one perfectly, a unit, and it 
is seen also that the spiritual nature of the body 
having been born of God in and with their head, 
Christ, were joint-heirs with him, of God and of 
the universe. Now it was for the first parents of 
these children and heirs of God that he planted a 
garden, and every tree that was good for food, and 
pleasant to the sight. And the tree of the knowl- 
edge of good and evil, and the tree of life, also in 
the midst of the garden. And he told them to eat 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 13 

freely of the fruit of all the trees of the garden, ex- 
cept that of the tree of knowledge of good and 
evil, of which they must ijot eat, because it would 
surely cause their death. He did not however tell 
them that they should thereby fall under his wrath 
and curse — they and their posterity, and suffer all 
the miseries of this life and the pains of hell forever 
— (as Christendom has taught for seventeen cen- 
turies) — not a word of it or like it. 

Now these children loved their Father and feared 
death, and for a hundred years (the time of their 
residence in the garden as we shall show) dared not 
even to touch it, until a being called a serpent, 
whom God had endowed with greater subtlety and 
knowledge than he had given to any other creature, 
and with the faculty of speech, came to Eve, and, 
informed her that the fruit which had hitherto been 
forbidden as fatal poison, had now become not only 
good for food, but medicinal also, and would open 
their eyes or develop their mental powers, and that 
they would not then die, as God had told them, as 
they would have done had they eaten it in early 
life. (And both the event and the word of God 
verified every word of the serpent.) Eve and her 
husband ate the fruit, they did not die — but sur- 
vived for hundreds of years. Their eyes were 
opened, and God said, " Behold the man is become 
like one of us to know good and evil." What shall 
we say now ? — we, an humble individual, at this 
late day — to the fathers of the Church, who have 
taught ever since the second century that the words 
of the serpent were all lies of the devil, and that 



14 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

Eve and Adam committed a crime by which not 
only they, and all the millions of their posterity be- 
came obnoxious to the T\yath and curse of God, and 
for which they deserved eternal torments, which 
subjected the whole universe to an everlasting blight 
and curse ? The simple, plain facts upon the record 
are these : The truth of every word of the serpent 
was, as we have shown, fully and literally verified by 
actual results and confirmed by the express decla- 
ration of God. 

We have only to ask those Christian fathers 
whether our first parents could by any act have 
achieved a greater glory than that by which they 
became like as gods ? — But you say they became as 
devils. There is nothing found in the context to 
authorize those good divines (for they w r ere Chris- 
tian men) to call the very act by which our first par- 
ents became more like God, the fall of man. The 
popular Christian Church has also taught, very erro- 
neously as we believe, that by the institution of the 
forbidden tree God placed the first parents in a 
state of probation, simply as a test of their fidelity 
and obedience. We cannot believe or admit that 
infinite wisdom and perfect foreknowledge required 
any such test, inasmuch as God knew before he 
planted the tree how long his children would ab- 
stain from the fruit, and when they would yield to 
the temptation to partake of it, and if the event 
had been contrary to his will, he would not have 
created and specially endowed the serpent by which 
he brought it to pass — and the Church by admitting 
(as she does) the existence of those divine attributes 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 15 

is greatly inconsistent with herself in teaching at 
the same time of probation. 

It is a just inference, therefore, that it was the 
will and purpose of God, that the forbidden fruit 
should not be eaten during its own immaturity, and 
that also of young humanity, which period was 
about the whole time of their residence in the 
garden, and which by a computation from the record 
was a fall century. We reckon thus : " Adam was 
at the birth of his third son, Seth, one hundred and 
thirty years old. We deduct that thirty years as a 
full allowance for the time which must have elapsed 
from the birth of his first son, Cain — born soon after 
the exodus from Eden — leaving a hundred years for 
the residence there. We gather from the record 
that the first parents, although of adult size, were 
in an infantile and childlike state; the fruits of the 
garden being to them what the nourishment of the 
mother's breast is to the infant, and for a hundred 
years they knew not that they were naked. And 
we infer from the same source that the term of time 
required for the attainment of manhood and woman- 
hood was at that age of the world in proportion to the 
average length of human life, the former being one 
hundred and the latter nine hundred years — in- 
stance, the first children of the first five generations 
from Adam were born about the hundredth year of 
their parents' age. And to our mind it is a natural 
inference that the fruit of the forbidden tree also 
required a century for its full maturity, and which 
is now found to be true of several vegetable pro- 
ductions. We conclude, therefore, naturally, as we 



16 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

conceive, that in the unripe state that fruit was 
a deadly poison to the digestive powers of a young 
human stomach. 

We have thus given the scriptural account of 
the origin and character of the humanity, and their 
history also, up to the close of the first century ; 
keeping in view, as we shall continue to do, the 
essential attributes of God, and his paternal relation 
to that humanity. At that period we find them to 
have attained under the divine economy their con- 
stitutional maturity of physical and mental man- 
hood and womanhood ; having acquired the god- 
like knowledge of good and evil, by which attain- 
ments they were fully qualified and prepared to ex- 
change their rudimental life, and the cultivation of 
the garden, for the full possession and enjoyment 
of the world-wide domain, and multiply and re- 
plenish the whole earth and subdue it ; according 
to their right and title recorded in their deed of 
gift from their Father, as follows, viz. : u Let them 
have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the 
fowls of the air, and over every living thing that 
moveth upon the earth." God having thus pre- 
pared his children for the change, in his wise and 
gracious economy (not in anger or wrath as is pop- 
ularly believed and taught), u sent them forth from 
the garden to till the open field," and lest they be 
inclined to return to the garden, and eat of the tree 
of life, or life-sustaining tree, (instead of the herb 
of the field, " which he was thenceforth to procure 
by the sweat of his face,") and so continue to live 
in the garden forever, " God placed a flaming sword 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 17 

which turned every way to keep the way/ 5 and bar 
his access to that tree. We learn further from the 
record, that as soon as the first parents knew that 
they were naked and had made themselves aprons 
of fig leaves, God in his paternal love and kindness 
made them coats of skins and clothed them, which 
was before, and, as we infer, preparatory to their 
exodus from the garden. And we learn from the 
record that God called his children to strict account 
for their disobedience to the letter, though we can- 
not believe they transgressed the spirit and intent 
of his command, and we are impelled to this belief 
by the fact that God foreknew and foresaw, and by 
his own act and providence, as we have shown, 
caused that apparent disobedience. God's words 
to Adam do indeed seem to reprove him, " Saying, 
hast thou eaten of the tree of which I commanded 
thee saying, thou shalt not eat of it ? " But he seems 
also to admit Adam's plea, that he received the 
fruit at the hand of the woman, that God gave him 
to be with him, and he apparently does the same in 
the case of Eve, who pleaded that " the serpent be- 
guiled her." And turning from Adam and Eve, 
" God said to the serpent, because thou has done 
this, cursed art thou above all cattle, upon thy belly 
shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days 
of thy life, and I will put enmity between thee 
and the woman, and between her seed and thy 
seed, it shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise 
his heel." 

The purport of this language is clearly a punish- 
ment for a sin, but can we admit that God would so 



18 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

punish a mere animal, simply "one of the cattle? " 
which having no moral sense or conscience, was con- 
sequently incapable of committing a moral offense ? 
The curse and the infliction, therefore, whatever 
might have been the design and purpose of them, 
were certainly not retributive. But may it not 
have been preventive ? The serpent, we infer, was 
to be more cursed than any of the other beasts of 
the field. Tthey are also cursed, though in what 
sense we are not informed. And the serpent 
was evidently to be changed from the erect form 
and made to go upon his belly, that he might become 
as he is at this day, cursedly hateful and fearful. It is 
inferable, therefore, that the change of form and loss 
of the faculty of speech was the curse to which he 
was subjected, though not as a punishment or retri- 
bution. God thus divested him of the endowments 
necessary for the performance of his mission, but 
for no other purpose, and which, if continued, might 
have been very onerous to the humanity. We have 
thus shown, as we trust, that the curse denounced 
against the serpent was not an execration as that 
term signifies, but the result of a change which 
God saw good to make in his condition, and of 
which he had no right to complain. God gave 
him his life and endowments, and had the sole 
right to change or dispose of them. We present 
this interpretation of the words of God to the 
serpent as having at least the merit of harmo- 
nizing with his attributes, his acts and providence, 
but we should be glad to see an abler or better ex- 
position having that indispensable recommendation. 



THE PEAEL OF GREAT PRICE. 19 



* 



THE WORDS OF GOD TO EVE. 

"And to the woman he said; I will greatly 
multiply thy sorrow and thy conception ; in sorrow 
shalt thou bring forth children : and thy desire shall 
be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." 
Our understanding of these words is the very 
reverse of the popular one ; the creeds see in them a 
sentence of the woman and her whole female pos- 
terity to a fearful punishment as for a crime of the 
deepest dye, while the language of the text is to 
our mind a gracious promise of a greatly multiplied 
conception and bringing forth of children, wherewith 
to replenish, subdue and cultivate, she and her chil- 
dren, their universal domain, subject only to the 
pain or sorrow of childbearing, resulting solely from 
physical conformation, and that pain and sorrow 
were to be remembered no more for joy at the birth 
of a God-given offspring. 



REMARKS. 

Eve was part of the earthly son of God of whom 
she also was thereby a daughter of God, Adam was 
her lord and she was his helpmeet, and his wife 
whom he loved, nourished, and cherished as " his 
own flesh ; " her subjection to his will, therefore, was 
not an infliction, but a kind providence and a 
blessing ; he was her protector and his rule over 
her was kindness and love. 



♦ 



20 THE PEAKL OF GREAT PRICE. 
THE WORDS OF GOD TO ADAM : 

"And unto Adam lie said, because thou hast 
hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten 
of the tree of which I commanded thee saying, Thou 
shalt not eat of it, cursed is the ground for thy sake, 
in sorrow shall thou eat of it all the days of thy life, 
thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth unto thee 
and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat 
of thy face shall thou eat bread, until thou return 
unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken, for 
dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return." 
God spake these words, let us remember, to his 
earthly son whom he had constituted the head of 
the whole earthly humanity, and which he had 
united and made one with the heavenly humanity, 
who being the members, as we have seen, of the na- 
ture and body of his first-begotten spiritual son, and 
who were consequently his (God's) children, and for 
which whole humanity so made one, God had framed 
the whole universe, they being God's heirs and joint 
heirs with his first-begotten son. And let us keep 
in mind, that this earthly son and Eve his wife had 
been good obedient children strictly obeying for a 
hundred years their father's command not to eat of 
the forbidden tree., and then because they were be- 
guiled, did they disobey him ; and we must likewise 
remember that God foreknew and foresaw the event, 
and also provided the means to bring it to pass. 
Now under this scriptural view of the whole case, 
can we believe that the term curse as used in this 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 21 

connection was an execration, an infliction of evil ? 
Or that it meant anything more than the thorns and 
thistles with which the ground was infested, and 
the toil and sweat of the face necessary to remove 
them and give place to the herb of the field ? and do 
we not know that the sweat and the labor necessary 
to the cultivation of the earth are essential to vigorous 
health, without which there is little or no enjoy- 
ment ? And was not an abundant harvest of the herb 
of the field a rich reward for the sweat and 
toil ? and was not the transfer from the garden an 
act of paternal kindness and love ? A transfer from 
a rudimental and childlike round of enjoyments to 
all the variety and forms of beauty of a world, 
with the divine promise of innumerable descendants 
to replenish and enjoy it ? Shall we then, as do the 
popular creeds, call the clothing of the naked chil- 
dren with coats of skins — the exodus from the gar- 
den to a world teeming with luxuriant productions 
and enjoyments, which fill the earth with food and 
gladness, a curse, an infliction of punishment, a 
vindictive retribution ? Do not those creeds vir- 
tually blaspheme the holy name by which they de- 
sire to be called ? 

Now in view of all these acts of paternal mercy 
and love toward the humanity as existing in the 
first parents ; and in view also of the divine perfec- 
tions, we are impelled to construe the words of 
God to Eve, to the serpent, and to Adam as if he 
had said to Eve, " Because, or seeing that thou hast 
attained to the 4 knowledge of good and evil ' and 
to the full maturity of thy mental and physical 



22 THE PEAEL OF GREAT PRICE. 

powers, ' I will greatly multiply ' thine offspring, 
subjecting thee to much suffering in bringing forth 
children, ' and thy desire,' or thy love, l shall be to 
thy husband, and he shall rule over,' or protect 
thee." And to the serpent, "As thou hast fulfilled 
the mission for which I especially endowed thee, I 
will now take from thee thy faculty of speech, and 
so change thy form that there shall be perpetual 
enmity between thee and the woman, and between 
her seed and thy seed, and it shall bruise thy head 
and thou shalt bruise his heel." And to Adam, 
Because, or seeing that thou hast hearkened to the 
voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the fruit 
which I commanded thee saying, " thou shall not 
eat of it in the unripe state, thou shalt henceforth 
till the ground, which for thy sake, and for thy 
good being is infested with thorns and thistles ; thou 
by the sweat of thy face shalt remove them, and 
cultivate instead thereof the herb of the field, which 
shall be thy bread until thou return unto the ground, 
for out of it wast thou taken, because thou art dust, 
and must therefore return to dust again." By this 
interpretation of the word of God we trust, as we 
have before said, to preserve the harmony of those 
words with his attributes and his ways. 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 23 



CHAPTER III. 

We now offer further exposition of the divine 
economy, and of God's paternal care and love for 
the humanity. We learn from the record that God 
was in daily communication with the first parents, 
and that he spake to them in audible words, duly 
and progressively teaching them the knowledge of 
himself, and, after the higher development of their 
understandings through the knowledge of good and 
evil, revealing to them more and more of his pur- 
poses of love toward them. 'And inasmuch as he 
had told them from the beginning that their bodies 
were but dust, and must therefore return to dust 
again, and had thereby given them a strong desire 
to live again, he revealed to them also the hope of 
immortal life and glory by the promise of the great 
Messiah, who was to come in due time, and, as the 
head of every man, offer himself a sacrifice, that, in 
and with their head, all mankind might die and rise 
again to immortality and glory. 

Which sacrifice and resurrection were symbolized, 
and thereby virtually promised to the world by in- 
stituting sacrificial worship and offerings. That 
institution symbolized the sacrificial death and the 



24 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

resurrection of Christ in this wise, viz. : As all man- 
kind by virtue of their headship existence in Christ, 
died in and with him, and in and with him rose from 
the dead, so under that mode of worship the offerer 
of the sacrifice died figuratively in and with the an- 
imal slain, and the blood of the sacrifice was offered 
and accepted of God, as the evidence of that figu- 
rative death ; and that acceptance signified the ac- 
cess of the offerer to, and the enjoyment of God's 
presence, which is resurrectional life, for " God is 
not a God of the dead, but of the living," and by 
the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ " all live 
unto God." We also learn from the record, that 
the offering of Abel was accepted, and that of Cain 
rejected, for the reason, as Paul informs us, that the 
former had faith in the Messiah, from which we in- 
fer that Cain had not that faith ; his offering, being 
only the fruit of the ground, was not a sacrifice — 
there was no blood, whereas Abel offered the blood 
of his flock, which was an expression of faith in 
the Messiah and his sacrifice. 

And we gather from the words of God to Cain 
(viz., "If thou doest well shalt thou not be ac- 
cepted ? ") that there was nothing wrong in his offer- 
ing as a gift or thank offering, only it was, as we 
have said, not a sacrifice ; his sin which God visited 
upon him was his anger and the murder of his 
brother. , 

It is a natural and scriptural inference that Adam 
taught his children the true significance of the sacri- 
ficial institution, and enjoined their strict observ- 
ance of it. And Saint Paul speaks of the elders of 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 25 

the human race, as having obtained a good report 
(from Adam as we infer, he being their natural 
teacher), and it is clearly inferable also, that that 
report was the account of the framing of the world 
by the word of God (spoken as we have before 
shown by his Son), also of the promise of the Mes- 
siah as given in the institution of sacrifice, as we 
have seen. The elders spoken of were doubtless 
Adam's earliest posterity, probably those who first 
began to call upon the name of the Lord and to 
offer sacrificial worship. We are impelled here to 
give expression to such conceptions of the greatness 
and glory of Adam as have been impressed upon 
us by the inspired record, of his origin, his relation 
to God, and to the entire humanity, and to the uni- 
verse of worlds. 



HIS ORIGIN. 

God formed his body from dust, and made that 
dust flesh and blood, and in the image and likeness 
of himself and of his first-begotten spiritual son, 
and God breathed into his nostrils the breath of 
life — and a living soul. God gave other animals 
the breath of life, but not a living soul. God caused 
to exist in Adam a whole species of bodies and souls 
in the mass and germinal and inert state. So he 
was the head of the whole species, each of whom 
was part of him, and he was part of them, and from 
him, therefore, and from no other source could that 
race proceed. And God united him and the whole 
2 



26 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

race in him, and made them one, each with an im- 
mortal spirit, constituent of the nature and body of 
which his spiritual first-begotten son was the glorious 
head. And by virtue of that union and oneness, 
he with all his posterity became joint heirs with the 
first-begotten son of God and of the universe — put- 
ting him in actual possession of this earth and the 
world, and all the appurtenances thereof. And God 
gave him a wife, who was part of himself — and 
who consequently shared with him the proprietor- 
ship of the world, and. the parentage of the human 
race. As the head is the glory of the body, so 
Adam was the most perfect man in endowments, 
personal grace, and comeliness of the species, 
except Jesus, who, as we shall show, was the pre- 
pared body for the perfect union and oneness in due 
time with the spiritual Son of God. Very great hon- 
or was conferred upon Adam by the Creator, and his 
great knowledge and wisdom were clearly implied in 
bringing and presenting to him all the beasts of the 
field and the birds of the air, that he might give 
them their proper names, and that whatever he 
should call them should be the names thereof. 

And from the evidence of his great administra- 
tive wisdom and capacity we may infer that he was 
duly qualified for a capable and faithful repository 
of what is called the oracles of God, viz., the account 
or history of the framing of the worlds, the forma- 
tion of man, the institution of sacrificial worship, 
and thereby the promise of the Messiah, so that he 
might truly, clearly, and faithfully deliver those 
oracles, as he received them in audible words from 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 27 

God, to the elders or his first children, as we have 
shown; that they might be transmitted down 
to Noah, and by him to his offspring and de- 
scendants, of whom are, of course, all the nations 
of the earth; which oracles were, as we gather 
from bible history, more or less adulterated by 
different nations, though providentially transmit- 
ted in their purity through Abraham, Isaac and 
Jacob, and their descendants to Moses, who, under 
divine inspiration wrote them, and committed them 
to the custody of the nation of Israel as the chosen 
people of God; chosen for that and other wise and 
gracious purposes ; not for their good alone, but 
through them to bless all mankind. And through 
those oracles thus written and preserved the world 
obtained all the knowledge it enjoyed of the true 
God, from Moses to Christ, and to this day it has 
no other reliable account of the origin or formation 
of the Earth or the Heavens than is given in the 
book of Genesis. 

Thus it is seen that, as the head is the source of 
the knowledge and understanding of the natural 
body, so Adam was the medium of the knowledge 
of God and his works and purposes of love to 
the humanity. It is also seen that God literally 
" crowned him with glory and honor," and actually 
set him over the works of his hands. It is clear 
from the record, as we understand it, that Adam 
was, next to Jesus, the most perfect, wise and good 
man that ever did or will exist, and was altogether 
such as infinite wisdom saw that the head of the 
earthly fleshly humanity should be, and that his wife 



28 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

Eve was worthy the honor of that relation. Hence 
we of course believe that the Christian Church has 
for these seventeen centuries done herself great dis- 
honor by charging both of them with a sin, as we 
have before shown, by which both they and their 
posterity were subjected to the wrath and curse of 
God, and the pains of hell forever. "Whereas, it 
would have been their right and privilege to have 
gloried in so great and so good an earthly parentage 
of the race, and to have referred to their record for 
the example of a holy life of nine centuries, save 
the eating of the forbidden fruit, from which they 
were artfully persuaded that the prohibition was 
withdrawn. 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 29 



CHAPTER IT. 

We now resume our illustration of the divine 
economy. We have seen that the oracles of God — 
the account of the formation of all things and 
beings, and of the institution of sacrificial worship, 
was preserved, and that that worship continued to 
be observed by Abel and others before, and by Noah 
and his descendants after the deluge. It seems to 
us, however, that in process of time, the most 
sublime and vital significance of the sacrificial offer- 
ings, which was the inbeing oneness of the humanity 
with the Messiah, and thereby the hope of a glori- 
ous resurrection, may have faded from the memory 
of the nations who descended from Noah. And 
without that idea a sacrifice would appear to be 
simply an expiation or an atonement for sin, and 
thereby a means of restoration to divine favor; 
hence the offering on great occasions of vicarious 
human sacrifices. And different nations, ascribing 
different attributes to the Deity, had each their own 
God, the result being the general Polytheism of the 
east. It is clear from the record that as early as the 
day of Abraham, Polytheism, and even idolatry was 
prevalent among the nations, and the faith in the 



30 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

Messiah, and the knowledge of the true God were 
"being lost to mankind, and for that cause God, in 
his faithfulness " and for his great love, wherewith 
he loved the world," chose Abraham, by and through 
whom to renew the promise of the Messiah, de- 
claring " that in and through his seed all nations and 
families of the earth should be blessed." 

And for the same cause, that is, for his love to 
all mankind, God chose the seed of Abraham as his 
peculiar people and nation, and set his mark upon 
them as such, which mark every son of Abraham, 
wherever born, has borne upon him for four thou- 
sand vears. 

And God further distinguished and set apart that 
nation from all mankind, by giving a written law 
and ordinances exclusively to that seed and that na- 
tion, and neither the law nor the ordinances were 
binding upon any individual of any other nation. 
Neither has God ever sent prophets to any Gentile 
until the resurrection of Christ from the dead, nor 
even then did he give any other law than the gospel, 
which is simply his law of love ; and let it be re- 
membered that God has no other law, that which 
he gave the Jews having been abolished eighteen 
hundred years ago. In giving that law to that na- 
tion God not only reestablished the sacrificial wor- 
ship with them, but added thereto a priesthood and 
ordinances, by which the institution symbolized 
more perfectly the character of the Messiah, as a 
priest, and the inbeing oneness with him of all man- 
kind, both in his death and resurrection, in this 
wise, viz., the names of the tribes of the whole peo- 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 31 

pie were graven upon the breast-plate of the high 
priest, so that he might bear them upon his heart 
before the Lord when he went into the most holy- 
places to offer the blood of the sacrifice; which 
blood was accepted of God as the evidence of the 
death of the priest, and of the people in him ; 
and the reappearance of the priest after that offer- 
ing and acceptance symbolized Christ's death and 
his coming forth from the tomb at his resurrec- 
tion. 

The ordinance of " anointing the high priest with 
the holy anointing oil " foreshadowed very clearly 
the anointing of Jesus with the holy spiritual Son 
of God, who came down from the opening heaven 
in emblem as a dove, and rested upon, and became 
one (as we shall show), with him (Jesus), at his bap- 
tism, that baptism answering to the preparatory 
washing of the priest. So also the divine accept- 
ance of the offering of the first ripe fruit, being a 
pledge or a promise of the certain and safe ingath- 
ering of the whole harvest, was most clearly a fore- 
shadowing of the resurrection of the Messiah, as 
" The first fruits from the dead." And his ac- 
ceptance as such, being received up into Heaven and 
seated at the right hand of God, was the pledge 
and promise of the Father that the whole harvest of 
the humanity should be gathered to a like immor- 
tality and glory with their head. As saith Sainf 
Paul in few words, viz. : " Christ the first fruits and 
afterwards they that are his at his coming." They 
that are Christ's being unquestionably the members 
of his body, that is " all mankind." 



32 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

We now resume our remarks on sacrificial offer- 
ings. We have seen that the death of animals 
offered in sacrifice was accepted as the death of the 
offerer himself (not in his room or stead), thereby 
showing that the death of the promised Messiah 
would be the death also of all mankind, by virtue 
of their inbeing oneness with him. We now show, 
according to the Scriptures, why that death was 
necessary, viz M the earthly humanity as it was caused 
to exist in Adam, was, as we have before shown, 
" made subject to vanity or death," and to all the 
wants, desires and appetites of the fleshly nature, 
which desires and appetites are called lusts, which 
lusts are prone to excessive indulgence, and from 
that pr oneness, covetousness, iniquity, and all sin 
is the natural outgrowth. The Scriptures expressly 
declare that those lusts are the sole origin and cause 
of sin. James i. 14. It is therefore clear and cer- 
tain that all mankind have those sinfully inclined 
lusts, and that death only can destroy them. u He 
that is dead is freed from sin." Rom. vi. 7. Now 
we have shown that Christ, who is both the Son of 
God and the Son of man in one person, is also the 
head both of the spiritual and heavenly and earthly 
and fleshly humanity, and that his fleshly body was, 
as saith the Scripture, " made in the likeness of sin- 
ful flesh, and that he was tempted in all points as 
•all mankind are tempted." It was necessary, there- 
fore, that the lusts of the head, the second Adam, 
the second head of his species, as well as those of 
the members of his body, should be destroyed by 
death, and for that cause he sacrificed his body upon 



THE PEAEL OF GREAT PRICE. 33 

the cross, which cross was the sacrificial altar of the 
New Testament ; and that is the true significance 
of that cross, and as such the sign of the cross of 
Christ is an everlasting memorial. Paul " gloried 
in the cross," because it, and the sacrifice offered 
upon it, superseded forever the altar and the sacri- 
fice offered thereon of the old dispensation, which, 
as he says, " served only as a type and shadow of 
the new." The apostle gloried greatly in the 
change from the shadow to the substance, but his 
chief joy, and the object, aim and end of his min- 
istry was to " make all men see " and understand 
that the sacrifice of Christ's body was to them, 
each and all of them, what the death of the head 
is to the literal body. And that by virtue of the 
same relation his resurrection would be as truly 
and verily theirs also. And he affirmed more- 
over, that " as they suffered with him (Christ), 
they should be also glorified together," and he 
taught further a like sublime and glorious truth, 
viz., that by that relation and oneness, they, all 
men, " were made to sit together with him " 
(in their headship existence in him) in his glory, 
where "he ever liveth to make intercession for 
them and to be the advocate of every man that 
sinneth." 

Such, we believe, is the scriptural showing of the 
cause, the necessity, and (to some extent) the glori- 
ous results of the sacrifice of the "Lamb of God," 
who took away the sin — "the sinful lusts of the 
world." To the extent of their headship existence 
in that glorious sacrificial " Lamb." 



2 



* 



34 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

And such, we believe, are the "things hoped 
for," through a promised Messiah, from Adam (inclu- 
sive), by all the Saints, holy men (and holy women 
too), to Christ. 



THE PEABL OF GREAT PKICE. 35 



CHAPTER V. 

But we have yet to speak of the crowning glory 
of that "Lamb of God' 5 and head of v every man, 
viz., the resurrectional life in a spiritual body, 
" which the Father having in himself, gave also to 
the Son to have in himself." We now submit a few 
remarks on the analogy of the headship existence 
of the many, or of the whole species in one, and 
shall endeavor to show that that mode of existence 
is declared by the books, both of Revelation and of 
Nature, to be the law of all organized life, both of 
beings and things. 

We have seen that all things and beings in the 
universe are of and through and in God, and that 
he gave them by his will, spoken by his Son, their 
present mode of existence, and we infer from his 
omnipresence or infinitely extended presence that 
the universe is extended from infinitesimal small- 
ness, and it is a scriptural and natural truth that 
only one mode and form of existence can proceed 
from one source or head of a species. The scrip- 
tural account of the formation of all things shows 
that every kind of organized life multiplies and 
procreates only and solely after their own kind. We 



36 THE PEAEL OF GREAT PEICE. 

have, therefore, the united testimony of revelation 
and nature in proof of the positive existence of the 
whole of every species, both in the animal and 
vegetable kingdoms, in their respective heads ; and 
the process of generation in both cases shows that 
the many in one must exist in the mass and inert 
state. The analogy therefore of all creation is in 
harmony with the Scripture doctrine of the head- 
ship existence of the spirits of the heavenly human- 
ity, that is, the spirits of all mankind in " Christy 
before the world began." 



THE PEAEL OF GREAT PRICE. 37 



CHAPTEE VI. 

We now offer some remarks on the legal church 
or dispensation, in its transition from that state to 
the dispensation of the Gospel or Gospel Church, 
which great change Christ called "the regenera- 
tion ; " saying to his apostles, " You that have been 
with me in the regeneration," &c. 

That work of regeneration was inaugurated by 
the " preaching of John the Baptist," whose birth, 
qualification, endowments^ and commission were 
together a miraculous fulfilment of prophecy ; being 
" filled with the Holy Ghost from the womb, and 
gifted with the spirit and power of Elias," he was 
the most powerful and successful preacher that had 
ever appeared, having remained in the wilderness 
from his birth and receiving his education not of 
men, but from God. About the twentieth year of 
his age, he had only to show himself to Israel, and 
to say " Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at 
hand, and all Judea and Jerusalem, and the coasts 
round about Jordan went out to him, and confessed 
their sins and were baptized." 

His raiment and his food were of the coarsest 
kind, but the thousands of his converts believed his 



38 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

message ; lie claimed to be nothing more than tlie 
voice of one crying in the wilderness, " Prepare ye 
the way of the Lord," and yet lie was a burning 
and a shining light ; and the people were willing 
for a season to rejoice in his light. 

But the joy and crown and the highest honor he 
sought to attain was to administer the baptism, or 
the washing of the Messiah, whose appearing he 
had proclaimed. Which washing was a requirement 
under the law preparatory to the anointing of the 
high priest, for he (John) had been told by him 
that sent him to baptize, that he should see the 
spirit descend from heaven upon him, and thus his 
joy was fulfilled. That spirit he saw descend in 
emblem as a dove and remain upon Jesus, which 
spirit was his anointing, as the great high priest, 
not of the Jewish nation, but of the whole world ; 
thus he saw and knew that Jesus was the Messiah 
he had proclaimed and in whom his disciples had 
believed, and he heard, moreover, and his disciples 
also, the voice that came from heaven, " saying, This 
is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased." 
John saw that his ministry was crowned and glo- 
rified, he knew as he said that Jesus must increase, 
and that he must decrease ; his soul was satisfied, 
he was ready and willing to lay his honors at Jesus' 
feet and to resign his office, and his life also — when 
he that sent him to baptize should require it. He 
continued to preach a short time and prepare a few 
more wise virgins to receive the bridegroom, then 
suffered martyrdom at the hand of the wicked 
Herod. 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 39 



CHAPTER Til. 



THE PERSON OF JESUS. 



God prepared the body of Jesus for his spiritual 
Son, as we learn from the Scriptures before cited, in 
this wise, viz., he gave it existence in the mass and 
germinal state as one of the species of earthly hu- 
manity, of which Adam was the head ; that exist- 
ence consisting in a human immortal soul and fleshly 
body, which soul and body came by the lineal de- 
scent of Abraham to the Yirgin Mary, and was born 
of her, the conception being miraculously the result 
of divine creative power. Thus that conception 
was holy, and yet the child born inherited from 
Adam the fleshly, sinfully inclined lusts to which, 
as we have shown, the entire race of the earthly 
humanity was made subject, as saith the Scripture, 
" He was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, and 
was tempted in all points as all mankind are 
tempted." Of the first thirty years of his life, his 
record shows only " that in his twelfth year he 
astonished the people with his wisdom and answers 
in a controversy with the doctors in the temple ; 
that he was filled with wisdom, that he grew in 



40 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

stature, and in favor with God and man ; and that 
he was subject to his parents, who dwelt in Naza- 
reth." We know of no public or official act of his 
life, until he presented himself to John for baptism 
or washing, preparatory to his anointing, as we have 
shown, with the holy spiritual Son of God, and his 
union and oneness thereby with him. 

Immediately after that union was perfected, we 
learn from the record that "that holy spiritual Son 
of God led Jesus up into the wilderness to be tempted 
of the devil. For we believe and shall show here- 
after, that the being who descended from heaven 
and rested upon the Son of man (Jesus), and who 
is called the Holy Ghost, was no other than the 
spiritual Son of God. A ghost is a spirit, and he 
was a spirit, though having a spiritual body, and 
by his union with Jesus he had a fleshly body also, 
and was no longer a ghost, but the fleshly Son of 
man, and Jesus, by the same union and oneness, be- 
came the Son of God. Now we do not understand 
that the tempter of Christ in the wilderness, called 
the devil, was anything more than an adversary, 
which is certainly the true scriptural meaning of 
the word in many places ; all manner of diseases are 
in the New Testament called devils, so are bad men 
and bad principles. An apostle was called ' Satan,' 
because he " savored the things that were of men, 
and not of God." And as we understand the Scrip- 
tures, the popular, and we may say the orthodox 
devil of these seventeen centuries is himself but an 
apocryphal being. Christ had a lust for worldly 
aggrandizement and power to tempt him to set up 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 41 

an earthly, instead of a spiritual kingdom ; also for the 
luxury, ease and vain show and grandeur of a tem- 
poral prince, and to cause him to shrink from a 
suffering life and the cruel and ignominious death 
of the cross, all which and more than these by the 
power of his love of the Father and delight in his 
Father's will, he triumphantly resisted and van- 
quished. Thus it is seen that the spiritual Son of 
God commenced to sanctify the earthly humanity 
immediately after he liad become their head, by his 
perfected union with the person of Jesus, whom 
Paul designated as " the second Adam," by resisting 
and vanquishing, as we have said, the lusts of that 
nature which he had by that union made his own. 
He began the contest between the spirit and the 
flesh by a " fast of forty days and forty nights," and 
the fleshly lusts contended for the supremacy by 
tempting him to avail himself of his great power, 
by assuming the government of all the kingdoms 
of the world, and taking advantage of extreme hun- 
ger after fasting, tempting him to make a vain show 
of that power by " commanding the stones to be- 
come bread," and again to indulge the same pride 
by " casting himself down from the pinnacle of the 
temple," all which lie rebuked and utterly con- 
demned by the written word of God. It was then 
and there in that wilderness, about the four thou- 
sandth year of the world, that the son of God, by 
and for whom the worlds were made, and who had 
become one with God's earthly Son, Jesus, began 
to live in that person the life of perfect obedience 
to his Father's will, which obedience was the per- 



42 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

feet " righteousness which came upon all men (the 
members of his body), to justification of life," and 
returning from the scene of that great conflict u in 
the power of the spirit " (the spirit of the Son of 
God), he continued to do the work and speak the 
words of God among the people of the house of 
Israel, to whom only he was sent " as to lost sheep," 
preaching the gospel, especially to the poor, healing 
diseases, suffering great privations, persecution and 
contradiction from sinners ; and at the end of about 
three years, the ignominious death of the cross. All 
that preaching, healing, suffering and death being 
acts of obedience to the Father's will, yielding to 
God what neither the first Adam nor any of his de- 
scendants could do, viz., perfect obedience to God 
and to his law, which, as we have shown, is simply 
the law of love ; God's paternal love alone to the 
humanitymoved him to require of his Son all those 
acts of mercy, all his sufferings and his death; 
which death, being as we have shown, that of u the 
head of every man, took away the sin of the world," 
and by which death it is also written, that God 
reconciled the world unto himself, no longer im- 
puting their trespasses unto them. 

Before we proceed to speak of the resurrection 
of Christ, and the glory that followed that great 
event, we offer some remarks on the peculiar rela- 
tion of the Messiah to the nation of Israel, and her 
amenability to the laws and ordinances of Moses, 
which law and ordinances were instituted by God's 
command ; and Jesus being of the seed of Abraham, 
was a Jew born, and was therefore circumcised aud 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 43 

bound thereby to keep the law and observe all its 
rites and requirements. 'No Israelite, whatever 
might be his office, honor or glory, was exempt from 
those requirements until that institution was abol- 
ished and superseded by the coming of the Messiah, 
or Christ in his kingdom, and Jesus was not Messiah, 
nor Christ until he was anointed, nor could he be 
anointed till he was baptized or washed, as the 
law required. His status therefore before that 
anointing was simply that of an Israelite, sustain- 
ing no office, attempting neither to preach or 
teach, but immediately after his anointing, as we 
have seen, with the holy spiritual Son of God, and 
his return* from the scene of his temptation in the 
wilderness, he began at Galilee to "preach and to 
say, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at 
hand." 

Now that kingdom was, as we show, no other 
than the kingdom also called the church of the 
Messiah Christ, and was to be a kingdom so great ? 
so blissful, and glorious, to the subjects of it, as 
to be like a heaven upon the earth, and so much 
greater and spiritually glorious than the Mosaic 
or the legal church and dispensation, that the for- 
mer was called heaven, and the latter, earth. The 
church of Moses was a glorious symbol, which 
glory the church of Christ exceeded as doth the 
perfect day that of the earliest dawn. Such was 
the "kingdom of heaven," for the attainment of 
which both John the Baptist and Christ called upon 
the people of Israel to " repent " and turn from 
their iniquities, and from the figurative and sym- 






4:4: THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

bolical cleansing from sin to the " Lamb of God," 
who had come and was about to " take away the 
sin of the world by the sacrifice of himself," and 
Christ commanded his Apostles also to say the same 
words, declaring at the same time " that he was 
sent (exclusively) to the lost sheep of the house of 
Israel," and " forbidding his Apostles also to preach 
to the Gentiles, or even to the Samaritans." The 
object and design of the divine economy was evi-> 
dently to close the dispensation of laws and ordi- 
nances, and symbolical purification from the sinfully 
inclined lusts of the flesh, which system had been 
instituted, as we have before shown, fifteen hundred 
years before; for the purpose of restoring to the 
world, and preserving therein the knowledge and 
worship of the true God. And we showed likewise 
that God chose the nation of Israel, by which to 
diffuse that great blessing, both for their own hap- 
piness, and through them for the good of all man- 
kind. We now show that the purpose and design 
of the whole ministry and preaching of John the 
Baptist, Christ and his Apostles was to regenerate, 
spiritualize and gospelize a portion of the Jewish 
people, wherewith to form and constitute a gospel 
church, together with the Gentile converts which 
should flow into it on the day of Pentecost, which 
was after the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension 
of Christ to the Father, and his return to earth, 
according to his word and promise to his Apostles 
before his death, John 14, 3, 18 ; which promise was 
literally fulfilled in his coming with the " sound of 
a rushing mighty wind, which filled the house where 



THE PEAEL OF GREAT PRICE. 45 

one hundred and twenty of his disciples were assem- 
bled." 

Thus he " baptized them with the Holy Ghost and 
with fire, that being in appearance as cloven tongues 
which sat upon each of them," by which u baptism 
and cloven tongues they were empowered to speak 
forth the wonderful works of God, in the language 
of every nation under heaven ; " and " converts from 
those nations were daily added to that church,'' 
which soon became the general assembly and church 
of the first-born, and of Jesus, the mediator of the 
new covenant. 

Such was the first gospel church or " kingdom 
of heaven " which was proclaimed to be at hand but 
which had not come, nor did it attain to its full 
power and greatest glory, as we shall show, until 
about thirty four years after it was so proclaimed to 
be at hand. We have thus shown that the kingdom 
of heaven or gospel church state, did not, and we 
now show, that it could not come while the Jewish 
church state, or legal dispensation continued to exist, 
because the latter was ordained of God, and all its 
requirements must be obeyed until the whole system 
should be abolished by the act of God, or by his 
providence, and that act or providence was the de- 
struction of Jerusalem and the temple, which was 
the total overthrow of the government, and was the 
entire abolishment of the civil, judicial and religious 
institutions of the nations, which great event did 
not take place, as we have said, until about thirty 
four years after the baptism of Christ and the 
beginning of his ministry. It is seen, therefore, 



46 THE PEAEL OF GREAT PEICE. 

that neither Christ nor the apostles, nor any Jew, 
whether believer or unbeliever, had any right to 
disobey or neglect to observe, and do all the 
requirements of the law. And Christ did so ob- 
serve and keep it. Instance, his " eating the pass- 
over on the same night in which he was betrayed ; " 
and that passover continued to be so kept by the 
apostles, and all the Jewish believers, until Jeru- 
salem was destroyed, while the believing Gentiles 
were in no case held to that observance or obe- 
dience. 

The gospel church in the mean while, though it 
" mightily grew and prospered," had not until about 
the time of the abolishment of the legal dispensation, 
attained to its fall power and greatest glory. Our 
remarks and commentaries on the divine culture, 
edification and final glorification of the humanity 
have brought us to the coming and "appearing of 
the son of God in the flesh " and the beginning of 
his ministry, which ministry, while in the flesh, was 
solely to the Jews, as was also that of his apostles 
by his command, as God had given no law, had 
sent no prophets to any other portion or any individ- 
ual of the human race, than the Israelites ; " but 
had suffered all nations to walk in their own ways," 
not imputing to them sin or transgression, but 
" giving them rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, 
filling their hearts with food and gladness." So 
God continued in like manner for three years 
longer to send his son and his apostles, and by them 
as he had always done by prophets to " warn them 
to turn from their iniquities," and to condemn and 



THE PEAEL OF GEEAT PRICE. 47 

threaten them with the severest sufferings for disob- 
edience, and to " warn them of a day of judgment 
and fiery indignation, which should destroy them." 
And such were the teachings, warnings, and threat- 
enings of Christ until his crucifixion and resurrec- 
tion, but no longer. Immediately thereafter he 
gave his apostles a new commission, namely " to go 
into all the world and preach the gospel to every 
creature." 

Christ's, and his apostles' ministry and mission to 
Israel as the chosen people of God, were ended. The 
great sacrifice was made ; the sin of the world from 
both Jew and Gentile alike was taken away by the 
" Lamb of God " and head of every man. The 
world was reconciled to God, a "new covenant was 
thereby made in and through Christ, not im- 
puting their trespasses unto them, but that God 
would be merciful to their unrighteousness and 
would remember their sins and their iniquities no 
more." 

Now that new covenant was the same which 
God promised by his prophet to make when the 
Messiah should come, and was no other than " the 
reconciliation" which Paul says " God made of the 
world unto himself in Christ by his death, as the 
head of every man," and for which cause he would no 
longer " impute their trespasses unto them." And by 
the same prophet, God said, " Though your sins be 
as scarlet, and red like crimson, they shall be as wool 
and as snow." We have now brought up the 
history of the universe, and especially of the human- 
ity as we find it in the book of Revelation and of 



48 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

Nature (for they always agree) to the instant of 
Christ's death when he said upon the Cross, " It is 
finished." From history we find that the status of 
the humanity, then past, present, and to come may 
be expressed in three words, viz. : It was saved. 
Christ came to seek it , he found it in a wilderness 
of sinfully inclined fleshly lusts, he laid its lusts and 
all upon his shoulders, and brought it home, took 
away its lusts and presented it purged from sin and 
clothed with a perfect righteousness and justification 
unto life to the Father, and the " covenant was 
' between them both ' that their sins though of 
scarlet and crimson dye, should be as wool and as 
snow." 

Now, therefore, it is an infinite fact that the 
whole humanity (and we always mean by that term 
all that ever were and will be of the human race) 
were saved from all condemnation, and are and 
ever will be accepted of God in their head, Christ, 
as though they had never sinned, and as though 
they were obedient and righteous. And such has 
been the redeemed and saved state of that humanity 
eighteen hundred and sixty-five years, less the thirty- 
three years of Christ's life in the flesh ; and no man 
nor angel from heaven since that date has had any 
warrant or authority from God or Christ to speak 
even of the chief of sinners, as under condemnation, 
or in danger of being lost or cast away, or that they 
can ever cease to be God's offspring, and the objects 
of his paternal care and his infinite mercy and forgiv- 
ing love. And such is the gospel of the grace of God, 
simply the grace, mercy and peace that is in Christ, 



•THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 49 

for all members of his body, which is all mankind, 
as we have seen. That gospel calls upon sinners to 
believe that they are saved, not to believe they will 
be saved, because they believe. This gospel was 
never preached till Christ came, and then only to 
the Jews, as the gospel of the kingdom, which king- 
dom had not come, and for the reason it was not true 
until the death of Christ, w r hich death was the sole 
cause of which that kingdom is the effect, as we have 
before shown, viz., that God suffered all nations until 
Christ came, to walk in their own ways, but then 
commanded them to repent. The inference is 
plain, as we conceive, that Paul preached to the 
Athenians the gospel of their salvation in Christ, 
and for that cause they were to repent, not to make 
that gospel true, but because it was true, and if they 
believed it true, it was good cause for their turning 
from both their sins and their idolatries, and that 
they might enjoy the blessedness of a gospel faith 
and a holy life. True and genuine repentance is 
always the fruit of gospel faith, but never the cause 
ot it. True gospel ministers, the ambassadors of 
Christ, never threaten, but beseech sinners to be 
reconciled to God and to love God, because he sent 
his Son to save them by taking away the sins of the 
world, arid if sinners believe the message, they neces- 
sarily, naturally and certainly respond to that love, 
and thus loving God, they love righteousness and 
hate sin, and desire to turn from it, which is " re- 
pentance unto life." ¥e have thus shown scrip- 
turally and clearly, as we hope, that the glorious 
gospel of the blessed God declared and proclaimed 
3 



50 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

that the whole and entire humanity was saved in 
and through the life and death of Christ, from all 
condemnation, and freely and perfectly justified and 
" made accepted in him," Christ. 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 51 



CHAPTEE VIII. 

We are now prepared, as we trust, to show the 
difference in purpose and design of the divine 
economy, in dispensing the law and its ordinances 
to the Jews (and to them only), and in dispensing 
the gospel to all mankind. Thus the law came to 
the Jews from God by Moses, which law found them 
in the indulgence of fleshly lusts, for which that law 
condemned them, showing that for the destruction 
of those lusts their fleshly bodies must also be de- 
stroyed, and that law immediately instituted sacri- 
ficial offerings, typifying and symbolizing the sacri- 
fice of a promised Messiah, and the very first re- 
quirement of that law was the offering the blood 
of the sacrificial lamb, sprinkled upon the door- 
pests of their dwellings, which blood was accepted 
of God, as the evidence of the figurative death of 
the people, in that of the paschal lamb ; and again 
after the people had journeyed from Egypt to Mount 
Sinai, Moses sprinkled all the people with sacrificial 
blood, in which God accepted them also, as having 
died in the animal slain, and also as his covenant 
people. It is thus clearly inferable from the record 
that that law was itself the condemnation of that 



52 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

people, nay, it was their curse (cursing every one, 
every Jew), that continued not in all things written 
in the book of the law to do them. Well and truly, 
therefore, did Paul call that law a " ministration of 
condemnation." For what purpose then, is the 
natural inquiry, was the law given ? Answer. " It 
was added because of transgression, till the seed 
' of the Messiah, Christ, 5 should come," evidently 
meaning, as we conceive, that the sacrifices under 
the law were instituted to show that death was 
necessary to destroy the fleshly lusts, and thereby 
purge away their sinfulness before they could have 
access to and acceptance with God, as we have be- 
fore shown, and these sacrifices symbolized that 
death and that access to and acceptance with God, 
until the seed — Christ — should come, for we have 
shown that the death of the animal slain was figu- 
ratively their death, so the death of Christ, the 
head, should be that also of all the members of his 
body. And, moreover, the law entered that the 
offence might abound ; that is, might be known ; as 
by the law, saith Paul, is the knowledge of sin. It 
is thus seen that the law given to the Israelites 
placed them under condemnation and also under a 
curse, and they remained in that state until Christ 
came and took both the condemnation and the curse, 
by his death, as the head of all mankind. Hence 
it is that Gentiles were also all under sin and in the 
same moral condition, and from the same cause, 
viz., the fleshly lusts, but they had never been so 
declared nor so cursed by a written law, as it is 
written, " sin is not imputed when there is no 



THE PEAEL OF GEEAT PEICE. 53 

law," and that is the only difference in the two 
cases. 

The Israelites had, by virtue of that law, been 
tinder that condemnation and that curse fifteen hun- 
dred years, but the Gentiles never. Therefore when 
Christ, the head of every man, took away the sins 
both of the Jews and the Gentiles by his death, and 
reconciled both unto God, there was no more con- 
demnation or curse in either case, and that ever- 
lasting gospel proclaimed that all the lost sheep of 
the Gentiles and of the house of Israel as well, con- 
stituted one fold, and were saved from their sins, 
and that the righteousness of Christ came upon them 
alike unto justification of life ; all which transpired 
in the year of Christ thirty- three, and on that day, 
and at the instant he proclaimed upon the cross, 
with a loud voice, " It is finished." Such is the only 
salvation, and the only gospel in support and in 
proof of which the Scriptures agree with them- 
selves, and at the same time with the attributes 
ascribed to God by the whole Christian world. And 
it is moreover the only salvation and gospel that 
were needed either by the whole or any portion of 
mankind. Tell us now thou doubting, fearing Chris- 
tendom, are not all these sheep safe in the fold, Christ ? 
Can the devil or any other adversary lay anything 
to their charge? It is God that justifieth them through 
Christ, that died for them. It having been scriptu 
rally and therefore triumphantly shown that the 
world is saved in and through Christ, it is in order 
to show the effects of that salvation upon those who 
have come to the knowledge of it, through the gos- 



54: TPIE PEAEL OF GREAT PRICE. 

pel. A very large portion of mankind have never 
heard the gospel of their salvation, and consequently 
are in no wise affected by it in this life, but who, as 
we shall show, will nevertheless be glorified in and 
by their head, Christ, in a spiritual, glorious, resur- 
rectional body. Comparatively but few of man- 
kind by the good providence of God, have heard 
the gospel, but those to whom he has given faith 
to believe it (for faith as well as the gospel is the gift 
of God) love God as the effect of that faith, in re- 
sponse to his infinite mercy and love to them, and 
(as we have before stated), loving God thus, they love 
righteousness and hate iniquity, which hatred is " re- 
pentance unto life." 'Now all those believers to 
whom God has given like precious faith, in all ages 
and among all sects of Christians, have enjoyed " the 
earnest of the heavenly inheritance, and have tasted 
the powers of the world to come," he having sent 
forth his spirit into their hearts, crying "Abba 
Father." In other words they sought and found 
communion with God in prayer, and God has given 
them a mental assurance which they have felt, of his 
presence and his love ; and for all this joy and bles- 
sedness of faith they are indebted to the sovereign or 
elective providence of God, which, for a wise and 
gracious purpose, he has in all ages vouchsafed to a 
comparative few, but not to the many of his chil- 
dren. And such we believe is the bible doctrine of 
election. God has elected or chosen certain persons 
for purposes, never exclusively for their own, but 
for the good of others, or of all mankind also as 
well ; instance Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and 



-THE PEARL OF GEEAT PRICE. 55 

even the whole nation of Israel, and in the case of 
Pharaoh, he chose a wicked king, by whom to bless 
the world, with the knowledge of himself. But in 
no case does that election or choice involve the 
ultimate salvation or glorification of any individual 
or portion of mankind to the exclusion of any other. 
And it is a great marvel to us how the good and 
great Calvin could reconcile any other doctrine of 
election, much less that of eternal reprobation, with 
the attributes which he himself ascribed to God. 



56 THE PEARL OF GEE AT PRICE. 



CHAPTER IX. 

"We will now endeavor to answer a natural and 
highly important inquiry, which all good Chris- 
tian inquirers will make, viz , how the great masses 
of mankind, probably a vast majority of the mil- 
lions of millions of the race whom, as we have seen, 
the gospel declares, are saved in Christ, " reconciled 
to God," and by Christ's righteousness "justified 
unto life ; " but who, nevertheless, are in their in- 
dividual mode of existence dead in trespasses and 
sin, and who live and die unregenerate and unre- 
pentant, are to be duly punished for their sins, or 
to be made holy and meet for the repentance of the 
saints in light. We answer, first, the punishment 
of sin means retribution, expiation, atonement — so 
much suffering for so much sin and wrong doing. 
Such is the character of the suffering which human 
laws inflict upon transgressors ; but it is not so with 
God, and for the simple reason that he sustains a 
different relation to the transgressor, viz., that of an 
infinitely merciful and loving Father ; all sinners are ' 
his offspring, having been in and with him their 
head, Christ, God-born, before the world began, 
and because of that relation God loves all mankind 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 57 

as he loves his Son, Christ, and being his children 
they are heirs also, and "joint heirs " of the whole 
universe. All suffering, therefore, which God in- 
flicts for sin is " chastisement," simply for their 
good, that they may be made "partakers of his 
holiness." God requires neither retribution nor 
atonement. He can sustain no injury from any 
being, nor can he be angry, or strictly speaking, 
displeased, for the reason that he has the power to 
prevent the occurrence of any event or the doing of 
any act or thing contrary to his will at. any time, 
and in all parts of the universe. There can be no 
such thing as justice between God and men; justice 
means mutual obligation of the parties, each to the 
other. God owes nothing to mankind but love, 
while they owe to him their very being and all 
things. All suffering inflicted by human laws is 
retributive, and should be reformatory also. God 
has ordained that all men shall " reap as they sow, 
and in the field where they sow," and all that is but 
the "chastisement" of infinite mercy and love; 
and it is clear and certain, from the very nature of 
God, which is simply Jove, that he can inflict no 
suffering upon any being, much less his children, 
but for their good. And it is equally clear that 
none but a Moloch could require suffering to gratify 
revenge or to satiate a thirst for blood. We trust, 
therefore, that all candid inquirers will see that 
there is no cause to fear ; but that there will be just 
as much suffering in this life as God requires. and is 
necessary for the well-being of all the parties con- 
cerned. The question yet to be answered is how 
3* 



58 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

the whole humanity, past, present, and to come, are 
in this individual mode of existence to be saved as 
perfectly as the gospel declares them to have been 
saved in their mass and headship existence in and 
through Christ. In that case it was scripturally 
shown that the whole race, inclusive of the head, 
Christ, were made partakers in Adam of a fleshly 
body, and thereby of fleshly lusts, which lusts were 
the sole cause of all sin ; and it was likewise shown 
that in its mass and headship existence that hu- 
manity died in and with Christ as truly, and in like 
manner, as the literal body dies with the head. And 
thus the whole humanity, in their headship exist- 
ence, was shorn both of its body and its lusts, which 
lusts constituted its sinfulness, and the whole spe- 
cies, inclusive of the head, Christ, was by that death 
freed from sin. Now, therefore, inasmuch as the 
death of the fleshly body was, in the above case, the 
death and the destruction of the fleshly lusts also, 
the same must be true of every individual of that 
humanity. The same cause must produce the same 
effect. It is, therefore, certain that the death of the 
body of every human being always was and always 
will be to that being his perfect and eternal deliver- 
ance from sinfulness and sin. And from these prem- 
ises it follows that death, natural death, frees the 
whole humanity, in its individual mode of being, 
from sinfulness and from sin. 



THE PEAEL OF GREAT PRICE. 59 



CHAPTEK X. 

We have so far answered the inquiries as we 
proposed, (that we have the whole individual hu- 
manity ready for glorification at death,) except the 
last branch of the question, viz. : How is that human- 
ity, even the vilest sinner thereof, to be relieved and 
freed from the guilt of actual sins and iniquities. 
The guilt of sin is popularly believed to be a moral 
defilement of the soul which must be mystically 
washed and thereby cleansed by the blood of Christ, 
which is a God-and-Ghrist-honoring thought. But 
Ave understand that the merit of Christ's blood 
consists in its being the evidence of his sacrificial 
death by which he crucified the lusts of the Adamic 
nature. Those lusts being, as we have seen, the sin 
of the world, which he took away by that death 
But the cure, the remedy for the guilt of the world 
is simply mercy, free pardoning mercy assured to 
them by a " covenant made with them in and 
through their head Christ," sealed by his blood on 
the cross, ratified by his resurrection by the power 
of the Father from the dead, and published by the 
preaching of the gospel, which is itself that " cove- 
nant " preached on and after the day of Pentecost 



60 THE PEARL OF GEEAT PRICE. 

to every creature (human being) under heaven.' 5 
Now that covenant and the reconciliation, of which 
Paul gloried in being a minister, are one and the 
same, and the express terms thereof, as we have 
before stated, are these viz. : " I (God) will be mer- 
ciful to their unrighteousness and I will remember 
their sins and iniquities no more." And God said 
by his prophet, " though their sins be as scarlet 
and red like crimson, they shall be as wool and as 
snow." In this covenant, therefore, provision is 
made especially for taking away the guilt of the 
entire individual humanity. .No language can 
more fully express and abundantly declare that 
fact, that there is no defilement, and nothing left but 
the purity of wool and snow. 

"It rises high, and drowneth hills, 

Hath neither show nor bound, 
Now if we search to find our guilt 

Our guilt can ne'er be found." 

We state therefore scripturally and we cannot 
but hope clearly and satisfactorily to a good portion 
of mankind, that the whole humanity is come to the 
instant of their death, saved in and by Christ from 
sinfulness, and thereby reconciled to God and by 
" Christ's righteousness justified unto life," all their 
unrighteousness pardoned, their sins and iniquities 
forgotten, blotted out, their guilt taken away, even 
their sins which are as scarlet and crimson made 
as wool and as snow ; and nothing remains or is 
wanting to complete their salvation and perfect 
fitness for glorification in a new resurrectional 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PEICE. 61 

spiritual body, like Christ's glorious body, but their 
own individual death by which to destroy their 
fleshly body, with its fleshly sinfully inclined lusts ; 
that sinful and sinning body thereby giving place 
to the clothing upon the soul and spirit, a spiritual 
an immortal instead of a fleshly and perishable 
organism. It is thus seen that the death of the 
body is an inevitable prerequisite to the reorganiza- 
tion of the human soul and spirit with an immortal 
spiritual organism, a body in and by which to see, 
know, and enjoy God and Christ and the glorified 
humanity, and the angels, and all things visible and 
invisible in the universe. And it is further shown 
that death is the last existing cause of human suf- 
fering, either physical or mental, and hence it is 
written that the last enemy that shall be destroyed 
is death. But the scriptures say further that the 
sting of death is sin ; meaning, as we infer, that the 
cause of death is sin, that is the existence of the 
sinful lusts, and it is added that the strength of sin 
is the law, that is, the imputation, condemnation of 
sin or those sinful lusts, and the apostle continues, 
" but thanks be to God who giveth us the victory 
through our Lord Jesus Christ ; " that is, as we have 
shown, by destroying those lusts by his sacrificial 
death. We now ask pardon of our readers for thus 
wearying them with our repetition, but hope the 
magnitude of the truths and subjects set forth and 
illustrated will cause them to excuse us. And we 
again state that the ' salvation of the whole human- 
ity is finished at and by their individual deaths. 



62 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 



CHAPTER XL 

But we have now to show that the great and 
perfect salvation is not glorification, and we trust 
the difference between them will be made fully 
apparent by the scripture to which we shall refer, 
and which we shall endeavor truly to interpret 
— those scriptures were spoken solely to the Israel- 
ites. We have before stated that the Old Testament 
scriptures which were written by Moses and the 
prophets, were wholly of that character, and to the 
Jews alone these laws and ordinances, precepts and 
commandments were given, and to them also were all 
the promises, even that of the Messiah, made exclu- 
sively, and in like manner all " warning, reproof, 
rebuke, condemnation and curses/' were adminis- 
tered solely to that people. In every instance and 
in all places where the " anger, wrath, vengeance of 
God " is spoken of, the Jews are the alone subjects of 
them, the 'days of judgment' were solely their 
days of judgment, i the last day and the great and 
terrible day of the Lord' were exclusively their 
last and their terrrible days ; the end of the world 
was the end of their dispensation, their civil and 
ecclesiastical governments. 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 



63 



The darkening of the sun and moon and the 
falling of the stars from heaven, were obviously the 
extinguishment of their spiritual glory, and the 
fallen stars were the priests and the rulers. It 
was clearly no other than the Jewish nation of 
whom it is written "that they drank the wine of the 
cup of God's wrath, and had wrung out and also 
drank the dregs thereof." Now all these scriptures, 
and many others of like import have no more refe- 
rence to any other nation, than if there was no 
other in existence. The whole Gentile world 
were left without law, ordinance or precept, without 
priest or prophet, without warnings of judgment 
to come, without condemnation or curses, or any 
manifestation of the anger, wrath or vengeance of 
God, but were abundantly assured of " his love and 
kindness in his sending them rain from heaven and 
fruitful seasons filling their hearts with food and 
gladness," as before stated, for four thousand years. 
From these premises it must be * obvious to all care- 
ful, unprejudiced readers and students of the Bible, 
that the language by which the prophets conveyed 
their messages from God to the people was that of 
the highest metaphorical, figurative and Oriental 
style, and as such only can we receive and construe 
every passage which speaks of the anger, wrath, 
vengeance or fury of God, as of man. We have 
therefore no more reason to suppose or believe that 
God posessed the human passions of anger, wrath 
or vengeance and fury, than we have to believe 
that his wrath was literally a cup of wine and 
his vengeance the dregs thereof, and that the 



64 THE PEAEL OF GREAT PRICE. 

people actually drank both the cup of wine and 
its dregs. 

We offer no comment on the scriptures referred 
to, as it was for the Jews only to understand and 
profit by a strict observance of their import and 
requirements. 

Our purpose is to show that the Scriptures can 
in no case be justly • construed to mean that God 
ever was or can be, strictly speaking, angry or 
vengeful, and that he can hate any existing thing in 
the universe ; which all Christendom is bound to be- 
lieve by her admission of his essential attributes. 
We remark further on this subject, that it is a fact of 
momentous significance to the world, and that it is 
for the popular creeds to account for it, viz. : That in 
all the threatenings of punishment, condemnation, 
and curses for disobedience and sins, by Moses and 
the prophets, there is not a word about the devil or 
everlasting hell torments, or suffering of any kind 
after death. Let those creed-makers then tell us 
how or why it was that God never revealed to 
Moses or the prophets that cardinal article of the 
popular faith of Christendom. But the teachers 
and preachers of those dogmas and of the infinitely 
wrathful and vengeful character and nature of God, 
in their great zeal, a zeal worthy an infinitely better 
cause, will ask us to account for the prevalence in 
the New Testament of such language and terms as 
hell, hellfire, everlasting fire, eternal damnation, 
the devil and his angels, torment in the flames of 
hell, etc We read also of the wrath and the ven- 
geance of God, and a day of judgment. Well, all 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 65 

this and more of similar import is found in the 
Gospels and in the Apostolic writings, and we trust 
we are not vain enough to presume that our humble 
illiterate self can account for their occurence there, 
to the satisfaction of all even of our candid readers. 
We shall however in our comments endeavor to 
keep to the Scriptures and to the character and at- 
tributes of God. "We have to say of all these scrip- 
tures that they are, like those of the prophetic writ- 
ings, addressed solely to the Jews, and in no case, 
whatever may be their true intent and meaning, do 
the} 7 refer to, or in any wise implicate or affect the 
condition of any Gentile upon the face of the earth. 
As it was with all the prophets, so John the Bap- 
tist and Christ were sent, and their ministry and 
messages, as they both affirmed, were " alone to the 
House of Israel," and Christ, as we have before 
seen, most " strictly forbade the Apostles to preach 
the Gospel even to the Gentiles or Samaritans." 
ISTow therefore it is no part of the ministration of 
gospel teachers to apply any of those scriptures to 
the Gentiles, nor even to the Jews, since their min- 
istration of death was abolished, and the middle 
wall of partition between the Jews and Gen- 
tiles was broken down. It was the Jewish priest 
and teacher, under the laws, w T ho were the rightful 
and only exponents of all their scriptures, as well 
as the meaning of the metaphorical and figurative 
language of John the Baptist and Christ and his 
Apostles, and they understood them well, though 
they heeded them not. The prevalent belief among 
the Jews in demoniac possessions, and that all dis- 



66 THE PEAEL OF GEE AT PEICE. 

eases and ills of life were so many devils swarming 
up from the infernal regions, or the prince of devils, 
is accounted for, as we believe, by the more general 
intercourse of the Jews with the eastern nations, 
especially the Persians, about five hundred years 
before Christ, when all these superstitions were part 
and parcel of the Zoroasterian system, and generally 
of the Oriental philosophy. It is certain however 
that these notions, and the belief in everlasting hell 
torments, were imbibed from the heathenism of 
heathen nations, inasmuch as they were not known 
(as before stated) among the Israelites for a thousand 
years before, nor found nor alluded to in all their 
scriptures. It is true Christ used the mode of ex- 
pression and illustrations current among the people, 
and was thereby probably better understood, as he 
used the figurative language of prophecy with which 
they were also familiar, but never in either case 
meaning to affirm the positive existence of such 
devils, or such a hell and hellfire as the uneducated 
classes believed in, but which belief they could not 
have derived from their own scriptures. We will 
instance the " Parable of the Sheep and Goats," and 
that also of the " Rich Man and Lazarus," the for- 
mer of which, it can be proved, alluded to events 
which transpired during the existence of the then 
present generation ; thus, in the 24th chapter of 
Matthew, Christ declared "he would come before 
that generation should pass away," and then in the 
25th chapter he affirmed that " when he should so 
come the nations should be gathered before him and 
he would divide them, as a shepherd divideth his 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 67 

sheep from the goats, 15 &c. It is evident therefore 
that all subsequent generations are thereby unaffec- 
ted by those events, either for good or evil. And 
if our good Christian divines hgid carefully looked 
into this matter in the second century, they might 
have prevented the seventeen hundred years of 
agony of a fearful looking for of " judgment, and of 
being cast into everlasting fire prepared for the 
devil and his angels." By the parable of the " Rich 
Man and Lazarus " we understand the rich man to 
have been the Jews, rich in the knowledge of God 
and his truth ; Lazarus to have been the Gentiles, 
living upon the crumbs of that knowledge, which 
fell from their abundant store or table. Of the 
other branch of the parable, viz. : The five brethren 
of the rich man — we make no application. It is 
obvious however that a more literal interpretation 
than we have given would place a literal beggar in 
Abraham's literal bosom, and a rich man's literal 
body, which had been buried in the earth, in flames 
of fire. But we now ask (and we hope in all good 
conscience and charity) of the believers in the pop- 
ular doctrine of a vengeful Deity and endless mis- 
ery, what would be the result to them and to the 
world if they could establish the fact that their in- 
terpretation of the scriptures above referred to as the 
subject of our comment is true — if it can be proved 
that wicked men and devils will forever exist as the 
objects of God's wrath and vengeance, and that he 
will eternally wreak that vengeance upon them — 
will not God be himself the subject of a tormenting 
passion, and if God is not able to prevent that which 



68 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

must result in his eternal unhappiness, is he Al- 
mighty, as you believe he is, or is he equal to his 
adversary in power ? Again, if the devil finally 
and eternally reigns and rales in hell over a por- 
tion of God's offspring, which he sent his Son to 
save, will he not show that his power and wisdom 
are greater than that of the Father and the Son % 
Again, can the devil be greater than the being from 
whom he has his existence? If all Christendom 
and the Bible ascribe to God infinite wisdom, al- 
mighty power, prescience, and omnipresence, and 
the authorship of all things and beings in the uni- 
verse, do they not set the Bible in array against it- 
self, and place themselves in the same position, by 
teaching and attempting to prove by the Scriptures 
that the wisdom and cunning of the devil found 
means to defeat the purpose and whole counsel of 
God, and so perfectly alienate and wholly corrupt 
the entire race, the millions of millions of God's 
own offspring, that they thereby became objects of 
his wrath and curse, and for which alienation and 
corruption he condemned and sentenced them to 
the pains of hell forever ? And, according to the 
same teaching, this almost infinite devil has been 
for six thousand years reaping the rich harvest of 
never-dying human souls, by which to populate his 
vast dominions. 

He received at one time, by means of the 
deluge, an accession to the number of his sub- 
jects — the entire population of the world, save 
Noah and his family ; and all the human beings 
that have died since the flood, about four thousand 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 69 

and five hundred years, save the righteous, and they 
have always been the few of mankind, have served 
but to increase the almost infinite number of his 
subjects or victims. And even for these eighteen 
hundred years, since Christ died to save the world, 
and his gospel has been preached, it is but the few 
who truly believe and repent. All others must 
share the same fate, and be alike the trophies of (ac- 
cording to popular theology) the infernal, but great- 
est conqueror of the universe. Now this mighty 
(if not almighty) devil laid the foundation of all 
this infernal glory (as the popular creeds teach) 
when he and the serpent went to Paradise in com- 
pany, the devil to suggest, and the serpent to speak 
lying words to Eve, to tempt her to eat the forbid- 
den fruit. That popular version of the matter 
leaves us tp wonder why the serpent w T as punished 
and the devil suffered to escape. The so-called Or- 
thodoxy has, ever since the second century, been 
very bold and earnest in support of a genuine faith 
in the existence and in the attributes (such as above 
named) of this mysteriously supreme devil, and in 
legions of other inferior devils also. And it is 
popularly held (uncharitably as we think) that 
without that faith, we cannot be true believers in 
Christ. To the best of our understanding and be- 
lief, the devil of the Bible is simply an adversa- 
ry, and may be many or few. But we do not be- 
lieve that any adversary of God or man can de- 
feat the divine purpose and counsel of God or is 
in any case beyond God's control. We do not be- 
lieve he occupies a literal hell, as much larger 



70 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

than Leaven as the sinners are more numerous 
than the saints. And yet we trust that we do 
believe what Philip required the Eunuch to be- 
lieve, viz. : That Jesus Christ is the Son of God. 
We do not however believe that the strong faith of 
popular orthodoxy in one or in many .devils pre- 
cludes a true faith in Christ, and a consequent holy 
and righteous life. 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 71 



CHAPTEE XII. 

We have sought both in the books of revelation 
and of nature, and have found, as we verily believe, 
" The Pearl of Great Price," viz. : The joint heir- 
ship of the whole humanity with Jesus Christ, of 
God, and of the universe, and we have shown that 
all who have access to those books, especially the 
former, may find the same " Pearl." The practical 
application therefore of that greatest of all truths 
is, that the status of all finders of that Pearl is as 
follows, viz. : The poor and the rich alike may claim 
that God is their Father, and inasmuch as they 
were together with Christ God-born, before the 
world began, God loves them as he loves Christ. 
And the poor are thereby assured that God cannot 
love them less than he loves the rich. And that 
God's providential allotments both to the rich and 
poor will eventuate alike for the positive good of 
both. And let the rich remember that the blessings 
of the poor, and their thanks for benefits and kind- 
ness received, are worth more to them than all earth- 
ly riches. And let both rich and poor remember 
that the highest possible glory consists in their one- 
ness with Christ, and thereby their positive filial 



72 THE PEAEL OF GEEAT PEICE. 






relation to God, and for that cause they are both 
alike admitted to daily communion with God and 
with Christ, and in Christ's name to enjoy the wit- 
nessing of God's spirit with their spirits, that he 
loves them as dear children. Let all heaven and all 
the earth remember that the destiny of Christ and 
the whole humanity is one. It is seen also that that 
hope is the Pearl, and is the " earnest " of the heav- 
enly " inheritance," and the possessor of it may re- 
joice and joy even in " tribulation, which worketh 
patience ; " that is, a patient endurance of all the 
suffering providentially allotted to them in this life. 
For, as we have shown, the whole humanity, as mem- 
bers of Christ's body, must be like their head, " made 
perfect through suffering," for which cause Jesus 
taught his disciples, nay, promised them " that in 
the world they should have tribulation, but that 
in him they should have peace." And all who have 
the " Pearl," or the earnest of salvation and of glo- 
rification, are thereby armed with patience and 
with resignation to all their sufferings, knowing 
that they terminate in the peace that they are to 
enjoy in Christ. But that portion of the humanity 
who have not found that " Pearl," have not fully 
enjoyed that " earnest of the heavenly inheritance," 
and do not therefore joy in tribulation. Tet they 
too under the divine economy are, as we have be- 
fore shown, to be made perfect through suffering, 
whether those sufferings are for sin or otherwise. 
For we have also shown that all pain and suffering 
are temporary evils, but positive final good. So 
that all the members of Christ's body, the whole 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 73 

humanity, suffer alike with him all the evil or pain 
which the divine economy foreordained and ap- 
pointed for them, by which economy both the head 
and the members are u perfected and glorified to- 
gether," an d so saith an Apostle : " If we suffer with 
him we shall reign with him." 



74 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 



CHAPTEE XIIL 

And now we declare, maintain and prove, by 
the attributes, the word, works, and ways of God, 
the following articles of faith, which we confidently 
trust will in God's time prevail in all the earth : 

Article 1st. — God is the Father of the whole 
humanity, whom he brought forth with Christ, their 
head, before the world began.. 

Article 2d. — Christ is the first begotten Son of 
God, and he is the express image of God's person. 
God is therefore a spiritual person, having a spirit- 
ual body of the human form, his presence or sphere 
being infinite extension. 

Article 3d. — God gave the universe of worlds, 
which existed invisibly and eternally in himself, 
visibility of form, glory and beauty, being himself 
its life and its motion. God willed that visibility 
of the universe, and expressed that will by his Son, 
and also for his Son, and the members of his body 
(the whole humanity), and by his word, spoken by 
his Son. 

Article 4zth. — And God formed an earthly Son 
also, in his own image and likeness, and constituted 
him also the head of a whole species of beings of a 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 75 

flesh and blood constitution, which he caused to 
exist in him ; and God breathed into that species so 
existing in their head, living immortal souls, and 
God called their name Adam. 

Article 5th. — And God united the members of 
the heavenly and spiritual nature and body, with 
those of the earthly nature and body, by which 
union they formed one whole body, all members of 
Christ and of Adam, and members of one another. 
God made the earthly fleshly nature subject to sin- 
fully inclined lusts and also to natural death, by 
which those were in due time to be destroyed by the 
death of the body ; and all souls and spirits when 
separated from those lusts by death are freed from 
sin, and God has given resurrectional power to 
Christ to clothe upon them glorious spiritual bodies 
like his own body. 

Article 6th. — And for that purpose Christ came 
immediately after the destruction of the city of 
Jerusalem, in the glory of his Father, with his an- 
gels, and resurrected all the souls and spirits of all 
human beings who had died previous to that 
period, and by scriptural authority we are assured 
that there has been, from that instant, a continuous 
resurrection of all souls and spirits immediately 
after death, and will so continue until earthly human 
existence and time shall be no more. 

Article 7th. — As the sinfully inclined lusts of 
every member of Christ's body necessitate their 
natural death for the destruction of those lusts, so 
Christ, being subject to the same lusts, must, in like 
manner, have them destroyed, and the oneness of 



76 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

his headship relation to those members required 
that he should suffer with and for them, and thus 
purify the whole nature and body, and present them 
with himself perfectly sanctified and holy to the 
Father, " saying, behold I and the children thou 
hast given me." By which sanctification God 
reconciled the world unto himself, and by which 
death it is declared that the sin of the world was 
taken away. And thus it is shown that by the in- 
being oneness of the humanity with Christ, their 
head, his whole life of holiness and obedience to 
God, and all his sufferings and death were really, 
positively and truly that of every human being that 
ever did or ever will exist. Hence it is written that 
" Christ's righteousness, at that time, came upon all 
men unto justification of life." And again, that 
" God raised them up (the humanity), together with 
Christ, and made them sit together in heaven," hav- 
ing risen from the tomb and ascended up with him 
from Bethany, where, in sight of his disciples and 
the attending angels he was received in a cloud from 
their view. 

Article 8th. — And God made a covenant with 
the whole humanity in and through Christ, their 
head, which, according to his promise by the pro- 
phets, was called a new covenant, viz., " that he 
would be merciful to their unrighteousness, and 
would remember their sins and their iniquities no 
more ; and though their sins should be as scarlet, 
and red like crimson, they should be as wool and 
as snow." 

Article 9th. — Christ is the high priest of the 



THE PEAKL OP GREAT PKICE. 



77 



humanity, and the advocate or justifier of every 
man that sinneth, and is touched with the feelings 
of their infirmities as the head feels the infirmities 
of every member of the body, and inasmuch as 
all the members of the humanity were, with their 
head, born of God, and are alike his offspring, his 
paternal infinite love will neither inflict upon them 
nor permit them to suffer any other than temporary 
pain or evil, which, under his economy, shall ulti- 
mate in their highest good. 

It is thus shown, according to the Scriptures, 
and it is necessarily true, according to God's attri- 
butes and his paternal relation to the whole human- 
ity, that he framed the universe by his Son, and 
that he appointed and made him and the whole 
humanity joint heirs of that universe and of eternal 
glory in his presence, and that such was God's 
eternal and immutable will and purpose ; and it is 
therefore certain, from the nature of things, that 
all God's works and ways and words have been from 
eternity pursuant to that love of the whole human- 
ity, and it is impossible that that love could ever 
have suffered any being to inflict any positive final 
evil upon any individual of that humanity. " Nei- 
ther can principalities nor powers, things present nor 
things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any 
other creature ever separate " a single human being 
" from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our 
Lord." 

" If there be a devil therefore, or devils, or hell, 
or hells, they have their existence from God, and 
will contribute to the salvation, and not to the 



78 THE PEAKL OF GREAT PRICE. 

damnation of mankind. There is no condemnation, 
but universal justification, even to the chief of sin- 
ners, world without end. No human being has any 
other being or any event to fear, seeing that his in- 
finite Father's love shall cause all things to work 
together for his ultimate and positive good, but has, 
on the contrary, every being, even those that hate 
and persecute him, to love, after the example of God 
and of Christ ; neither has he anything or being to 
hate, but iniquity and hatred itself. 

The paternal relation of God to mankind, as 
well as his character and attributes, requires that all 
men shall reap as they sow, and in the field (this 
life) where they sow, and for that cause has, in all 
ages, visited their sins with the rod and their in- 
iquities with stripes, but always in love, never in 
wrath or vengeance. All his judgments upon na- 
tions, communities, or individuals, are of that 
character, causing all " to receive in themselves the 
recompense of their error, which is meet." Every 
man's conscience is a court. "If he sin, his judg- 
ment lingereth not and his damnation slumbereth 
not." And by all these the humanity shall be per- 
fect through suffering. 

We have thus seen that God is no less the cause 
of the sufferings than of the salvation of the hu- 
manity, and that he did save and reconcile that 
humanity unto himself (not imputing their tres- 
passes unto them) eighteen hundred years ago. 



THE PEAHL OF GREAT PKICE. 79 



CHAPTER XIV. 

It is unscriptural and unchristian, to teacli or 
preach that any human being has yet to make his 
peace with God, or to do any act or thing whereby 
to obtain his own salvation, or to proffer his aid to 
others in any manner or by any means for such a 
purpose. It is also clear and certain that a world 
already saved needs neither works of any kind, nor 
priests, nor ministers, nor ordinances, nor sacra- 
ments, nor prayers, nor churches, nor altars, nor any 
of the so-called means of grace to save it. There 
is no cause for laying again the foundation of re- 
pentance from dead works, and of the doctrine of 
baptism and of faith toward God. All these to- 
gether could never save a soul, never take away the 
sin of the world, nor reconcile it to God, or justify 
it by the righteousness of Christ, its head ; and yet 
they have each their appropriate place and sphere 
in the gospel church ; priests and ministers, pastors 
and teachers, are the syribassadors of Christ, as 
though God did beseech all sinners by them to be- 
lieve that they are and were reconciled to him 
through Christ, their head, and the church in which 
these saved sinners may assemble themselves, not to 



80 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

placate the divine wrath and vengeance, and thereby 
escape eternal hell torments, but to worship God 
and offer the spiritual sacrifices (every sinner being 
himself a priest), of an humble spirit and contrite 
heart, and of thanksgiving and praise, acceptable to 
God through Christ Jesus, our Lord, and such ordi- 
nances and sacraments as were observed by the 
church in her first estate, are conducive to the in- 
crease and joy of faith. And the assurance God gave, 
alike to the poor and rich, of his paternal love for 
them, and the burdens and yoke which he required 
them to take upon themselves, was also given in love. 
We have shown that no being can love any other be- 
ing or object which is not in itself apparently lovable. 
How then shall men love their enemies, or the most 
violent and vicious transgressor ? Answer. Men 
must pray for grace to love those sinners, even the 
chief of sinners, as God and Christ see them, viz., 
as they saw them before the world began, pure holy 
spirits, which, together with their head, were born 
of God, but were for an infinitely wise and gracious 
purpose made partakers of fleshly lusts, by which 
they were drawn away and enticed to commit all 
those abominations, but which lusts are to be de- 
stroyed by death, and the soul and spirits set free, 
and in due time to be clothed with a spiritual body, 
like Christ's body. And God knowing their frame, 
that it is dust, is mercifulsto their unrighteousness, 
and remembereth their sins and their iniquities no' 
more, seeing only that they are his offspring and in 
his own image and likeness. Now, if all mankind 
saw each other as God sees them, they would see 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 81 

that human souls and spirits are of far higher nature, 
and more like the God of love and of glory than 
angels or any other beings in the universe, and are 
therefore more lovable, and can be perfectly and 
universally loved as God's children and a universal 
brotherhood ; and seeing all mankind as such, even 
the greatest enemy can be loved, fed, clothed and 
prayed for. Having shown that every human being 
is " a child and heir of God, and of the universe 
of worlds," and of immortality and heaven, we 
proclaim that it is the divine right of that human- 
ity and every member thereof, to rise from the dust 
of doubt and uncertainty, fear and terror, and put 
on the garments of praise, and of glory and beauty, 
as the members of the general assembly and church 
of the first born, wliose names are written in heav- 
en, and the names of God and Christ are written 
upon them. Stand forth, then, the entire humanity, 
and claim the unspeakable honor and glory of your 
oneness with Christ, and thereby your heirship of 
God. Let the poor and destitute of that humanity 
say, We ask not the riches of earth, neither do we 
envy the comparatively few of the humanity w r ho 
are rich, inasmuch as their wealth, as well as our 
poverty, is the wisest and best allotment, both for 
them and for us. 
4* 



82 THE PEAHL OF GKEAT PRICE. 



CHAPTER XV. 

We hope it is now seen by a portion, at least, of 
our readers, that the world — the humanity, were 
saved in their head, Christ, by being baptized into 
his death and raised up with him from the dead, 
and so in that headship mode of being were saved 
and glorified at that time. But it remained for that 
humanity, in their individual mode of being, to be 
glorified at the second coming of Christ, who resur- 
rected those who had, until that period, slept in him, 
and subsequently to glorify all human beings at 
death, and to continue a like process of glorification 
until earthly existence shall cease. — The present 

The resurrectional spiritual body, the present 
fleshly organism, is shown in the Scriptures to be 
imperfect, and as "seeing things which are tem- 
poral only, not which are eternal, and as seeing 
through a glass darkly." It is sufficient therefore 
only for a very partial development of the powers 
of the human soul ; and that development is greater 
or less, as the physical conformation is more or less 
perfect, and is to be destroyed by death ; when the 
organism is no more, the senses revert to the soul, 
to which they all belong. And when the soul is 



THE PEAEL OF GEEAT PEICE. 83 

reorganized, with its appropriate spiritual immortal 
body, it will still be in the fleshly human form, 
which is also the form of Christ and of God ; and 
that soul, spirit and spiritual body will constitute a 
glorified body, and with its head, will be a joint 
heir of all things. And the Christ-like and God-like 
form, faculties and power of that glorified human- 
ity will be susceptible also of progressive develop- 
ment, world without end. The joys of Heaven, the 
supreme joy of Christ and the members of his glori- 
fied body, in the presence of God, and the happiness 
of doing his will, are thereby to increase eternally 
their knowledge of him and of his works ; and in 
that enjoyment they will be one with their head, 
Christ, being eternally with him beholding his 
glory. And as we have shown that Christ is ever 
with the Father in the government of the universe, 
and that he must reign till he removes every hin- 
drance to the glorification of humanity ; and as he 
is the advocate of every man that sinneth, and is 
touched with the feeling of their infirmities, it is 
rationally and naturally inferable that glorified souls 
and spirits may come to earth on missions of love, 
promotive of the well-being of their brethren, yet 
to be glorified. We do not, however, infer the possi- 
bility of any communication of disembodied souls 
with human beings, while in the unorganized state. 



84 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

Akd it should be known and understood by all 
kings, governments and governors, " that the pow- 
ers that be," even of earth, are ordained of God, 
for the well-being of the entire humanity, and are 
under the control and the direction of the Son of 
God, as they ever have been ; and it should be kept 
in memory that the spiritual Son of God, by whom 
he spake the universe into visibility of form and 
glory, has in all time been the same speaker of his 
word and doer of his will in all the government of 
all beings and things in that universe. God spake 
by him (as we understand the Scriptures) all his 
words to Adam and Eve, and in all cases where his 
word was spoken to any of their posterity. He 
gave to Adam, and through him to the elders, as 
we gather from the record, a good and true report 
of the framing of the worlds, and henceforth by 
him and by him only came the word of God, 
whether to instruct or command, to institute sacri- 
ficial offerings and worship, or to bring the flood 
upon the earth, or to destroy human life by any 
other means, which lie alone may do, seeing he is 
the giver of it, and always does it in love; or 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 85 

whether the rain is to be brought upon the earth, 
or withheld, as the will of God may be. And all 
miraculous manifestations of divine power were 
performed by him, at the will and command of the 
Father. Instance the signs and wonders in Egypt, at 
the Red Sea, at Mount Sinai, and the continuance of 
them by the prophets. By him alone came also the 
word of the Lord to all true prophets. He was the 
spirit of prophecy in them. They searched to know 
what or what manner of time " the spirit of Christ, 
which was in them, did signify where it testified 
beforehand of his sufferings and glory that should 
follow/' Now the Apostle Peter speaks here of the 
spiritual Son of God as the spirit of prophecy and 
the spirit of Christ also, which was true when Peter 
wrote, but not so when the prophecy was spoken, 
because there was no Christ until Jesus, the Mes- 
siah, came, and was anointed with that same holy 
spirit, which was in the prophets, and which was 
none other than the spiritual Son of God. And by 
that anointing Jesus became Christ, the Son of God, 
and the spiritual Son of God became his ghost or 
his spirit ; and he was thenceforth " known as the 
holy spirit or ghost of Jesus, and hence the saying 
of Jesus that ' the Father would send the com- 
forter,' the spiritual Son of God in Jesus' name, 
and that when he did so come he would not speak 
of himself, but of him, Jesus, only. And Paul 
says of him, that he was made of the seed of David, 
according to the flesh, and was " declared the Son 
of God, with power, according to the spirit of holi- 
ness, by the resurrection from the dead." 



86 THE PEAKL OF GREAT PRICE. 

These testimonies show most clearly, as we have 
before seen, that the body which God prepared, in 
which for his first begotten spiritual Son to become 
incarnate, as saith the Scriptures, that the word 
might become flesh and dwell among us, and there- 
by the head of the fleshly as well as the spiritual 
nature, was the person of Jesus, and his record shows 
that his personal endowments, both of body and 
mind, were transcendent! y great in wisdom, grace 
and beauty, being altogether worthy such a glorious 
anointing and perfect union with him, who was the 
express image of God's person and brightness of his 
glory. 

It was meet also that the head of the earthly 
fleshly humanity should, in all these endowments, 
have the preeminence over the members of the body. 
Such was the true character of Jesus when he came 
from Nazareth to be anointed by and made one with 
the first begotten Son of God, who (as we have be- 
fore seen), literally and visibly descended upon him 
from heaven, forming thereby in one person, the Son 
of God and the Son of man — and that person being 
the head both of the spiritual, the earthly and 
fleshly humanity. TTe have, therefore, existing in 
that person, the first begotten Son of God, and head 
of every man reigning over, resurrecting and glori- 
fying the humanity and all in the name of Jesus, 
and who will so " reign until death itself is swal- 
lowed up of life." And such was the power of 
which he spake to his Apostles, when he told them, 
just before his ascension, " that all power in heaven 
and in earth was given unto him." 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 87 

The humanity was saved in and by his person 
after his anointing, and he must reign over all king- 
doms (providentially) dashing them like a potter's 
vessel, if the will of the Father be so, until he shall 
deliver up that humanity redeemed, resurrected in 
bodies like his own glorious body, and God shall be 
all in all ; that is enjoyed by all his children. And 
now, inasmuch as we have shown that the infinite 
Father has made the humanity to reign in and with 
their head, over his spiritual kingdom, we refer also 
to the same love and paternal care which has given 
them the whole earth, with its appurtenances, the 
sea and air, the light and glory of the heavens which 
he has made, and that only as a temporary resi- 
dence, or a sojourn until the eternal inheritance and 
glory. 

Let the poor of the humanity run with patience 
the race set before them, and be content with the 
earnest of their inheritance ; and let the rich do 
good and distribute. And it is pertinent to this 
great subject of higher and lower orders of beings 
in God's universe to refer to that of the angels who 
are spiritual, immortal, holy and glorious beings, 
excelling in wisdom, strength and beauty all other 
beings, save the humanity and its glorious head, to 
whom they were expressly appointed to minister, 
and which service has been and will ever be their 
inexpressible joy and delight. Instance their visible 
and therefore miraculous appearance from the be- 
ginning of the world — at the exodus of the first 
parents from Eden (" when cherubims kept the way 
of the tree of life," which they were commanded to 



88 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

guard), and their attendance, at Bethany, of the 
visible as'cension of Christ. He (Christ) always 
spake of them as ministering servants to himself and 
the members of his body, but never as the children 
of God, nor of God as their Father. 

St. Paul expresses the same truth by asking the 
cpestion, know ye not that ye shall judge angels % 
"We infer from the Scriptures that all visible appear- 
ances and ministrations of angels were miraculous, 
and we have shown that the age of miracles began 
with the foundation of the world by the word of 
God, and ended with the close of the Jewish dis- 
pensation. Since that event we have no scriptural 
or other reliable evidence of their visible agency in 
the direction of human events ; but we may scrip- 
turally infer, as we conceive, that their Lord, Christ, 
to whom all power in heaven and in earth is given, 
by which to execute the commands of the Father, 
directs these ministries for the well-being of the 
whole humanity and of the universe of worlds. 

"We are unable, however, to find any evidence that 
the angels or any other being than God and Christ 
can communicate with the human soul and spirit, 
while in the fleshly organization. Disembodied 
souls and spirits have existed, as we have shown, in 
the inert and wholly unconscious state. We do not 
believe that they can either act, suffer, or enjoy, nor 
that any other souls or spirits exist now in that state, 
being all subjects of the resurrection at death. 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 89 



CHAPTER XVII. 



AN INFINITE EVENT. 



The beginning of the way or the acts of God, 
was an event in eternity ; that event was the birth, 
the bringing forth of a Son ill his own likeness and 
express image of his person, and the brightness of 
his glory. And in and with him a whole species of 
beings, a like nature-constituent of a body of which 
he was the head. Such was the great event of eter- 
nity, -and pursuant to that act and event, all the 
subsequent acts, events, works and ways of God 
forevermore. 

As a subsequent infinitely important event — God 
gave being to another Son also, in his own likeness 
and image, consisting of an immortal soul and a 
mortal fleshly body ; and constituted him also the 
head of a species of like nature and character. An- 
other infinitely important act of God, was the raising 
and bringing again from the dead our Lord Jesus 
Christ. On that greatest of all events to the human- 
ity, of course to the universe, hung the eternal destiny 
of both. In and with that body was entombed every 
ray of hope of a yet to be raised and glorified hu- 



90 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

inanity, and of the very existence of the universe. 
Did he rise ? Had he not risen, the humanity was lost 
and the universe an eternal blot. How do we know 
he rose ? As certainly as we know there were such 
men as the Apostles, and such a country and city as 
Judea and Jerusalem. History, written and tra- 
ditional, can make nothing more certain. 

Jesus, the head of every man, has risen and is 
glorified at the right hand of God, where the hu- 
manity must follow him, as the body must be with 
the head. 

" Jesus has risen, and Man cannot die." 

From these infinite events and facts alone (we 
have abundant other testimony to the same effect) 
we have perfect rest and peace ; it comes from God 
our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ, rest and 
peace for the humanity past, present, and to eome. 

Come the humanity to this rest and this peace, 
for it is glorious. Come singly, come by families, 
communities, kingdoms, and nations to this rest. 
And thou half-starved' and famishing Christendom, 
return thou backsliding daughter to this rest, which 
was the glory of thy first estate, and from which 
thou hast been wandering after the mystery of in- 
iquity, which is infinite evil and sin ! And why 
continue to preach a gospel which has given neither 
rest nor peace for seventeen centuries, and in its 
final results promises to be but little more than a 
failure ? 



THE PEARL OF GEE AT PRICE. 91 



CHAPTEK XVIII. 



THE RESURRECTION 



We have shown from the Scriptures, as we un- 
derstand them, that the miraculous outpourings of 
Christ's Holy Spirit and power, on and after the 
day of Pentecost, until his Gospel had been preached 
to and received by all nations, were the true and 
indisputable signs and evidences of his second com- 
ing at that time. And that, as he had predicted, 
that period was the day of judgment, when all 
tilings written in the Scriptures should be fulfilled ; 
all of which terminated, as we have seen, in the de- 
struction of Jerusalem. We have now to show 
that all the dead, who died previous to that 
time, were then gloriously resurrected. Although 
it may not be one of the things or events clear- 
ly spoken of in the Scriptures to which Christ 
then referred, it is certain that it was fore- 
shadowed and symbolized in the sacrificial wor- 
ship instituted, as we have shown, in the days of 
Adam's early posterity, and continued to be so ob- 
served until Christ came, who himself publicly 
taught the doctrine, and referred to Moses in proof 



92 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

of its truth. The fact therefore that there shall be 
a resurrection of all the dead, though not found 
written in £o many words in the Old Testament, is 
nevertheless fully and clearly therein affirmed ; to 
the certainty of that resurrection we have the 
united testimony of those Scriptures and of Christ 
himself, but the time and manner thereof are more 
fully and perfectly revealed in the apostolic writ- 
ings and in the predictions of Christ, to which we 
now refer. It is abundantly shown from the pre- 
dictions of Christ that the epoch of his second 
coming, or of his coining; in his kingdom — the 
glorious Gospel-church — and that of the day of 
judgment, or destruction of Jerusalem, were one 
and the same, and that the thirty odd years follow- 
ing immediately after the day of judgment was 
that epoch. And we refer to the uniform teach- 
ings of the Apostles on the momentous subject of 
those events, which distinctly and positively affirm 
that the second coming of Christ, the day of 
judgment, and the resurrection of the dead were 
to transpire at the same time, within the term 
of their natural lives and that of the then present 
generation. In proof of the infallibility of that 
teaching we may refer to the promise which Christ 
made to those Apostles while he was yet in the 
flesh, viz. : That the Comforter, his Holy Spirit, 
whom the Father would send in his (Christ's) 
name, would be thsh* teacher and would show 
them things to come. 

It is thus declared and certified by Christ and 
his Apostles that the dead were to be raised, all 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 93 

who had then departed this life, immediately after 
the destruction of Jerusalem. 

And now for a right understanding and knowl- 
edge of the manner, the power, and the glory of 
that resurrection. We avail ourselves of the same 
teaching and divine inspiration of our instructors. 

On that great subject, and the great glory of the 
resurrection, St. Paul stands pre-eminently its ex- 
pounder and also as the preacher of Jesus and the 
resurrection, viz. : St. Paul predicates the certainty 
of the resurrection of all the dead on the fact of 
the resurrection of Christ, and that fact he estab- 
lishes by the eye-witnesses of Cephas, then all the 
Apostles, then of above five hundred brethren at 
once, and last of all that he was seen by himself, 
which must have been after Christ's ascension, 
which was a manifestation of himself vouchsafed, 
we believe, to no other apostle. Paul argues that 
as death came by Adam, the resurrection came by 
Christ ; that is, for the same reason, they be- 
ing alike each the head of his species. Naturally 
and necessarily as the fleshly organism was de- 
stroyed by the constitutional mortality of Adam, 
so the new organism resulted from the constitu- 
tional immortality of Christ, and the old and new 
organisms of the whole species or members of the 
body were alike the same as that of their respective 
heads. And he shows that it is the germ of life 
only which is contained in the grain of wheat that 
springs to a new life, and that life cannot take place 
until the body of the kernel dies. So it is with the 
human soul and spirit ; only that is to be reani- 



94 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

mated and receive the resurrection al body after the 
fleshly organism is destroyed by death. So also is 
the resurrection of the dead. " It is sown in cor- 
ruption, it is raised in incorruption j it is sown in 
dishonor, it is raised in glory ; it is sown in weak- 
ness, it is raised in power ; it is sown a natural 
body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural 
body and there is a spiritual body." As in Adam all 
die (in the fleshly organism) even so in Christ shall 
all be made alive, that is, in the Christ-like, spirit- 
ual body. But the Apostle adds : " Every man in 
his own order." Christ (the head) the " first-fruits, 
and afterwards they that are his (members of his 
body) at his coming." That is, every man or every 
thing in its natural order ; Christ, being the head, 
must rise from the dead first, and afterwards, or 
next, they that are his, that is, the members of his 
body — all who died in Adam — were made alive in 
Christ. Such is the nature, the order, the manner, 
and the time of the resurrection, according to the 
Scriptures, as we understand them. 

But St. Paul shows us a mystery which gives 
us the glorious assurance of a continuous resurrection 
in all time, of all mankind, himself included, at or 
immediately after death : u we shall not all sleep " 
saith he, but " we shall all be changed, in a moment, 
in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, for 
the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be 
raised, incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 
For this corruptible (that is this earthly fleshly hu- 
manity) must put on incorruption, and this mortal 
must put on immortality." 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 95 

So when this corruptible (inclusive of the last 
human being that shall ever exist) shall have put 
on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on 
immortality, then shall be brought to pass the 
saying that is written, when the last human being 
has been thus brought to the resurrection, " Death 
is swallowed up in victory." " Oh ! death where is 
thy sting ? " the sting is drawn by the glorious 
assurance of a continuous resurrection to immortal- 
ity and glory. " The sting of death is sin : " sinful 
lusts necessitate death, which death destroys with 
the body. The law is the strength of sin, that is, 
to the Jews only ; they being under the legal dispen- 
sation, were alone condemned by it. "But thanks 
be to God," said St. Paul, he being a Jew, Christ 
had abolished that law, and given him the victory 
over the law and reconciled both Jews and Gentiles 
unto God, who has forgiven them all trespasses. 



THE TRUMPET AND THE LA.ST TRUMP. 

" The trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be 
raised." It must be obvious to all that a literal 
trumpet could not be meant ; it was .doubtless a 
figure of speech and signifies power — and may be 
an allusion to the trumpet which sounded loud and 
long when God came down upon Mount Sinai, and 
is expressive of the great and glorious power of the 
resurrection, when Christ came in the glory of his 
Father to call to life all disembodied souls and 
spirits, " clothing upon them " a glorious spiritual 



96 THE PEAEL OF GREAT PEICE. 

body. Nor was that coming, and thus glorifying " 
that portion of the myriads of the humanity, the 
less glorious because it was invisible. Christ pre- 
dicted it would be. The invisible is more glorious 
than the visible, for the reason that the cause is 
greater than the effect. 

We now offer some remarks in answer to the 
very natural inquiry, — "Why was there not from the 
beginning a resurrection of all souls and spirits af- 
ter death ? The question is answered, as we appre- 
hend, in the " order " of the resurrection, viz. : 
Christ the first-fruits, and afterward they that are 
his (the members of his body) at his coming. The 
head necessarily precedes the body, and we have 
before shown that the first-begotten Son of God, 
the head of the spiritual humanity, (that is, the 
spirits-constituent of his spiritual body,) had not 
become the head of the earthly humanity until he 
was made one with Jesus, in whose person (the body 
which the Father had prepared for him) he took the 
headship relation of Adam to the earthly, fleshly 
humanity. And then, in that person, and not till 
then, could he die, and in that nature rise and be- 
come the first-fruits thereof. And we have also 
shown that as all souls, spirits, and bodies were in 
God, he gave his Son to have the spiritual bodies of 
all the members of his body (the whole humanity) 
to exist germinally in himself. It is thus seen that 
all disembodied souls and spirits, being members 
of the body, could not in the natural order of 
things be resurrected before, but must follow the 
head in that resurrection; hence their necessary 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 97 

sleep in Christ until his death and resurrection and 
second coming in his glorious resurrectional power, 
to resurrect them, and to resurrect likewise all who 
should be subsequently disembodied by death, im- 
mediately thereafter. All this glory in the process 
of glorifying the whole humanity is beautifully 
symbolized in the offering by the Israelites of the 
first ripe fruits unto God, and his acceptance of that 
offering, being a pledge or an assurance of the safe 
and certain in-gathering of the whole harvest. So, 
as we have before seen, Christ offered himself to 
God as the first purified portion of the humanity of 
which he was the head, and his resurrection from 
the dead declared the acceptance of his offering ; 
and the order of the resurrection by the divine 
economy is that the resurrection of all the mem- 
bers of the body shall follow that of the head. 

Before we pass from this resurrectional and glo- 
rious solution of all human destiny, we will for a 
moment contrast its nature, order, and time with 
that which is taught by the popular creeds.. They 
hold that the literal fleshly body is to be raised, 
that its dust and ashes are to be collected, reformed, 
reanimated at some time in the future world, and 
the bodies, of the saints fitted for heaven and glory, 
and those of the sinners for hell and its torments 
forever. "We mean no exaggeration, and leave all 
comments for the reader. 

Our illustrations of the Bible account of the 
origin and purpose of the universe, have brought 
us to the epochs, as before seen, of the day of judg- 
ment, the abolishment of the legal dispensation, 
5 



98 THE PEARL OF GREAT PEICE. 

the passing away of the Jewish Church arid State, 
the second coming of Christ, the resurrection, and 
the coming of the Kingdom of God in her great 
power and glory. All these, if they were not ac- 
tually simultaneous, transpired about the year of 
Christ seventy. 






THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 99 



CHAPTER XIX. 

Our remarks and expositions will henceforth 
have reference to certain important changes in 
the Christian Church, affecting adversely her faith 
and practice, her most lamentable change being 
" the departure of a great portion of her body 
from the grace, free and unconditional, that is in 
Christ," for the entire humanity, as the members 
of his body and thereby the children of God. 
And we shall endeavor to show, and we trust suc- 
cessfully, that the cause of that departure from the 
truth was the receiving by the Church of the Pa- 
gan dogma of infinite evil ; which, it is plainly in- 
ferable, both from sacred and profane history, was 
brought into the Church by Pagan priests, who were 
Christian converts and became eminent Christian 
Fathers, and doubtless very learned and pious men, 
who were believers in Christ, and yet in the exist- 
ence of an infinite evil principle ; which, however, 
was but a different phase of the belief in an infinite 
evil being of the then very popular Oriental Phi- 
losophy. 

It was a fundamental error, and most prolific of 
ascriptions to the Deity of malignant passion, wrath, 



100 THE PEABL OF GREAT PRICE. 

vengeance, and infinite cruelties toward his own 
offspring. All these were ascribed to the gods of 
the nations, who were believed to be provoked there- 
to by the existence of positive infinite evil, and the 
wickedness of men tempted by a wicked devil, or 
God and his angels ; this is about the sum and sub- 
stance of the philosophy of most of those Eastern 
nations. Now it seems clear to our mind that the 
philosophy of the existence of infinite evil and sin, 
or an infinitely wicked God or devil, is very unphilo- 
sophical, if we admit also the existence of an infin- 
itely good God, or of any positive infinite good. 
For there cannot be two infinite beings. If the 
evil God be infinitely evil and infinite in power, he 
will destroy all good and all good beings, or rather 
would have prevented their existence. And so of 
the good God, if those nations admit and acknowl- 
edge the existence of an infinitely good being — in- 
finite in wisdom and power, omniscient, omnipres- 
ent — they must give up the evil God, inasmuch as 
there is not, neither can there ever be, any being or 
any thing or principle in the universe but which is 
of him (the true God), and is therefore good and 
not evil. He is the sole author of the universe and 
all things therein. If there be devils and hell, or 
hellfire, they exist, as before said, for the good of all 
parties concerned, and all that ends well is good. 

Many good men have for centuries believed in 
the existence of devils — but never have seen or felt 
them. The Apostles seem not to have known any- 
thing of a real personal devil. Saint Paul comes 
the nearest to a description of him, in speaking of 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 101 

the prince of the power of the air, which he subse- 
quently shows, however, was simply the spirit of 
disobedience in the hearts of the Jews. Christ 
spake of him as the father of the wicked Jews — 
which if taken literally would make him only a 
Jew also, nothing more ; his existence therefore is 
to our mind simply a myth, and we know that his 
place is fully supplied as a tempter of the sinfully 
inclined fleshly lusts of all mankind. But these 
devils and hells, wrath, and vengeance of God must 
have their existence from the evil God, or principle 
of infinite evil of the Persian or Oriental philoso- 
phy. We infer therefore that with the introduction 
into the Christian Church, about the close of the 
first century, of the dogma of infinite evil and sin, 
came also the belief in the infinite wrath and anger 
of God toward all sinners, and their belief also in 
a devil who is almost a God — being present in all 
places and at all times to tempt and incite all man- 
kind to evil ; and there must needs be a vast hell, 
in which for him to reign as supreme director of the 
torments of his victims, and at the same time exe- 
cuting fierce wrath of the good God upon his rebel- 
lious offspring. And from the same source is suf- 
fering, vicarious atonement, imputed or transferable 
righteousness, and eternal torments. 

Now it is marvellous to relate, but nevertheless 
true, that the Christian Church embraced all these 
immediately after the death of the Apostles — who 
had during their whole ministry preached to her 
and to the world nothing but the pure " gospel of 
the grace of God to a world dead in trespasses and 



102 THE PEAKL OF GREAT PKICE. 

sins," asking or demanding nothing from that world 
but to believe, accept, and rejoice in that grace, and 
then, for their own happiness and well-being, and 
not as a price or condition, to repent, and turn from 
their sins, iniquities, and idolatries to serve the liv- 
ing and true God. And it is alike marvellous that 
she should so soon depart from a gospel by the sole 
power of which she had attained to her greatness 
and glory. Well, what shall we say of her from 
. the second to the nineteenth century I — That she is 
not the Church of Christ i— God forbid ! Her gold 
is changed, her " most fine gold w (her hope and her 
faith in the free, unconditional, pardoning mercy 
and love of God to all sinners) " is become dim." 
But she is still the kingdom of God that was to 
come. Take her as a whole, inclusive of the first 
Church at Jerusalem, with all her daughters — Cath- 
olic and Protestant — she preaches Christ, she con- 
serves the Bible, the oracles of God, for which the 
world is infinitely her debtor ; also for the main- 
tenance of the public worship of the true God, and 
she is greatly to be praised for charity and zeal. 
We love her, as a whole — she is our mother. Had 
she not kept the oracles of God we could not have 
learned what little we know of God and Christ 
and of their love to the humanity. God " will 
send reapers to gather and burn the tares from 
her wheat in his time, and she shall be saved as by 
fire," and she will return to her first love " in all 
the joy of faith." As in the day of her espousals 
to her head, Christ and she shall rejoice in the one- 
ness of the whole humanity with him ; and her 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 103 

ministers, being all ambassadors for Christ, will in 
his stead (not threaten sinners with the wrath and 
vengeance of God) but will beseech and pray them 
to be reconciled to God, " assuring them of God's 
covenant with them through Christ to be merciful 
to their unrighteousness and remember their sins 
and their iniquities no more, and even their sins 
which are as scarlet, and red like crimson, shall be 
in his sight as wool and as snow." 

And then we may confidently hope that, as in the 
first estate of the Church, the Holy Spirit, the Holy 
Ghost of Christy will fall upon believing sinners, 
who will flock in clouds as doves to her windows. 
And in that day the believers will not "neglect the 
assembling of themselves together for thanksgiving 
and praise, not that they may escape eternal tor- 
ments, or to 'placate the wrath of a vengeful 
Deity, but that they may commune with the Father 
and his Son Jesus Christ, and with one another, and 
thereby increase their joy of faith. And every 
Christian minister shall understand and feel that he 
has no warrant from God or Christ to speak of their 
divine wrath or vengeance, nor to use the profane 
language of hell and eternal damnation, nor in any 
wise to allude to future or everlasting punishment ; 
nor the condemnation of the law, nor to any law 
except that which shall " go forth from the spiritual 
Jerusalem," the Gospel-church, which is simply the 
law of love. In resuming our remarks, we are im- 
pelled to note some of the effects of the departure 
of the Church from her first estate, upon her own 
body, and the influence thereby exerted upon the 



104 THE PEARL OF GKEAT PRICE. 

world. From the history of the Church during her 
first estate — a period, as we have seen, of about 
thirty-four years — we learn that the simple gospel 
of the grace of God won its great victories over the 
hearts of the nations, and their kings and queens, 
solely by the power of infinite mercy and forgiving 
love, neither needing nor seeking the aid of wealth 
or the worldly splendors of mostly find magnificent 
temples for worship, or a splendid literature, or of 
pompous ceremonies, or worldly aggrandisement of 
any kind. And in no instance did the Church at- 
tempt to grasp political power. Neither did she 
make or practise wars, either between portions of 
her own body, or offensive or defensive with any 
other power. The Church was, in her first estate, a 
literal fulfilment of the prophecy, that there should 
be nothing to hurt nor destroy in all God's holy 
mountain. But what is the record of the same 
Church almost immediately after she received' 
the dogma of infinite evil and sin — an infinitely 
wicked devil, and the consequent wrath and ven- 
geance of God, eternal hell torments, vicarious 
atonement, imputed or transferable righteousness ? 
History answers that certain of her bishops and 
other church dignitaries used their influence in the 
church for their personal aggrandizement and 
power, from whence ensued war and fighting, and 
a struggle for political power and universal domin- 
ion ; hence the long reign of terror in the church 
and the most cruel and bloody persecutions for her- 
esy and schism. And all these persecutions and 
cruelties, the gibbet, the rack, and burning at the 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 105 

stake, were under the sanction of the Church, and 
as they believed and taught were for the good of the 
Church and the glory of God. And history further 
shows that during the second estate of the Church, 
that is, these seventeen centuries, she has not ceased 
to sanction war. All Christian nations continue to 
learn war, to lift the sword, nation against nation, 
in desolating, bloody strife. How in the first estate 
of the Christian Church there was no persecution 
by her for heresy or other cause, although she was 
persecuted even unto death, nor was there any 
usurpation of power by her ministers, neither did 
she learn or practise war or sanction it. 

What, then, is the cause of the lapse and fall of 
the Church from her primitive faith and glory ? Is 
it not found in the attributes she ascribed to God, as 
necessitated by her belief in the existence of infi- 
nite evil and sin, viz. : infinite anger, wrath, ven- 
geance, and Hatred even of his own offspring ? Did 
she not rationally conclude that if God eternally 
hates and punishes all finally unrepentant sinners 
in hell, she is only imitating him by hating and 
tormenting and burning heretics ? And also that 
she is doing God's service by warring against all 
nations which are enemies to the Church 2 



5* 



106 THE PEARL Otf GREAT PRICE. 



CHAPTEE XX. 



SIN AND SINNERS. 



Sinners do not know the true God, and there- 
fore cannot sin against liim; the moment they 
know him, as revealed in the Gospel, they love him 
as an all-gracious and all-loving God and Father. 
Some great and learned divines have argued that 
sin is infinite, because committed against an infinite 
Being. As well might they say that divine service 
is infinite because it is rendered to an infinite God ; 
those divines know and teach, on other occasions, 
that the being of God only is infinite. Sinners sin 
not against God objectively, but subjectively, being 
bound by his law of equity toward their fellow- 
men, and of love both toward God and man, and 
cannot do or cause any greater evil than to inflict 
physical or mental pain and suffering upon them in 
this life, finite beings as they are. And who shall 
dare to say that infinite wisdom and goodness shall 
not be able so to direct that suffering in its greatest 
intensity that it may result in positive eternal good ? 
And who shall doubt such a consummation is as cer- 
tain as the existence of that wisdom and goodness ? 



THE PEAKL OF GKEAT PRICE. 107 

And if such had not been the purpose of God from 
the beginning, who can believe that he would have 
permitted, much less have caused, the existence of 
such sin and suffering? 

It is certain, therefore, and clear to our mind 
that good must be the final result of all sin and suf- 
fering, past, present, and to come, as the existence 
of God. Predestinarianism is therefore true in its 
fullest extent and meaning, and the renowned John 
Calvin was right — all but one word, viz. : — damna- 
tion ; put salvation instead thereof, and his system 
is invulnerable. Neither was he, so much as the 
early Christian Fathers, accountable for that error, 
as he would doubtless have used the right word 
had he not been taught by those Fathers the dog- 
ma of infinite evil and sin, and the consequent 
vengeful character of God, vicarious suffering of 
Christ, and endless sin and misery. Calvin taught, 
and proved clearly, that God foreknew and fore- 
ordained whatsoever cometh to pass, but did not 
see that an infinitely good being could not ordain 
final evil and sin, and the eternal damnation of his 
own offspring, and that for no purpose but his own 
will and pleasure, and he very honestly argued that 
no other cause existed for that damnation. The 
true definition of sin, according to the scriptures to 
which we have referred, is the violation of the 
principle or law of equity between man and man — 
that principle or law having its origin in the one- 
ness of nature of the human kind — and that equity 
is both the written and unwritten law of God ; but 
duty and obligation to God spring from a different 



108 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

relation, viz. : filial and paternal ; and it will be 
shown in that day that such relation is eternally in- 
dissoluble ; no act or wickedness of the child, or 
other cause, can destroy it — God being immutable 
and man immortal. And that God seeth not as 
man seeth ; the latter seeth only the outward, sin-, 
ful, fleshly man, and his sinfulness, but God sees, 
even in the chief of sinners, the soul and spirit, 
which is his own offspring, made in his image and 
after his likeness. 

Such is the scriptural, and, to our mind, the ra- 
tional definition of the term sin. But the Scrip- 
tures show further that excessive indulgence of 
the fleshly appetites and passions, and the unnat- 
ural use and prostitution of them is sin, being a de- 
filement and desecration of the body, which is 
made in the divine image, as above shown. And 
the sinner necessarily "receives in himself the 
recompense of his error, the suffering for his sin 
which is meet." 

THE JUSTICE OF GOD. 

Justice is a conformity in principle and conduct 
to the laws of equity. God is above or beyond the 
reach of that or any other law or rule of conduct 
out of himself. All beings having rights have re- 
ceived both their beings and rights from him. He 
is himself the eternal and only good of the uni- 
verse, of which he, being the author, loves all be- 
ings and things therein. His love, therefore, is the 
rule of his conduct, and as the sun naturally diffuses 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 109 

light, so God dispenses the highest good to the uni- 
verse, and his grace and glory to the humanity, in 
and through Christ their head. 



FAITH IN GOD. 

Faith is belief, more or less strong, according to 
evidence. Faith in God, like all other blessings, is 
a gift from him, given to different persons and por- 
tions of mankind at different times, and to a great- 
er or less degree of assurance, and in and by divers 
ways and means ; and, like other divine bestow- 
ments, is to be sought for, although given unsought 
for, when the promised or intended good is universal 
or national. 

Instance God's promise to Abraham of the salva- 
tion of the world, and his appearing to Moses at 
the burning bush ; and when the word of the Lord 
came to the prophets to be spoken by them to the 
Israelites (which word of the Lord, as we have be- 
fore shown, was the spiritual Son of God, called 
the "Holy Ghost," or the "spirit of prophecy"), 
and all God's miraculous manifestations of himself 
and his power and presence to Adam and his pos- 
terity before, and to Noah and others after the del- 
uge. God has from the beginning given to the hu- 
manity a progressive knowledge of himself, and of 
his love and kindness toward them, according to 
which has been the degree of their faith in that 
love ; and the object of all miracles, inclusive of 
the audible words spoken to the first parents and 



110 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

their descendants, has been the increase of their 
faith. It is clearly inferable from the Scriptures 
that there has been from the formation of man a 
gradual but constant development of the faculties 
and powers of the human mind. And that mira- 
cles have increased in number and in the greater 
manifestations of God, until the coming of his Son 
from the opening heavens, which period of about 
four thousand years we may designate as the first 
age of miracles. 

The second age continuing from that time un- 
til the second coming of Christ and his Kingdom, 
or Kingdom of God, as he predicted, in great pow- 
er and glory. Which Kingdom, as hitherto stated, 
was no other than the Gospel Church, which com- 
ing and power and glory were simultaneous with 
the destruction of Jerusalem, the abolishment of 
the legal dispensation, and the .resurrection, about 
the close of the apostolic age, and as we gather the 
history of the second and last age of miracles, a 
period of about thirty-four years. And we have 
searched in vain for a reliable account of a single 
miracle after that date. Except — and for ourself 
we always do except — that mental assurance of the 
presence of God and love of God given spiritually, 
and therefore supernaturally, in answer to the 
prayer of penitent sinners ; and which we have 
elsewhere shown has been and continues to be givej} 
to millions of such sinners in all Christendom 
and among all sects who preach Christ. And that 
miracle will continue to be wrought as long as there 
are sinners to pray, and to be born of love, and of 



. _ THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. Ill 

God. And why should not all other miracles have 
ceased in the coming of the Kingdom or Church 
state, in which the chief of sinners may thus com- 
mune with God, and feel his presence and his 
love, and rejoice therein with " joy unspeaka- 
ble and full of glory." And inasmuch as the 
coming of Christ, his death and resurrection, his 
ascension to the Father, and his return from 
thence to pour out in miraculous effusion his " Holy 
Spirit or Ghost" upon the millions or whole nations 
of men, which power and great glory was to all 
other miracles what the perfect glory of the day is 
to its earliest dawn. And why should we look for 
starlight when we have the light of the sun ? An- 
other question, alike simple and plain, is not for the 
Church alone, but for all to answer who believe in a 
God, infinitely wise, powerful, and omnipresent, 
who is the sole origin and cause of all beings and 
things in the universe, in whom all beings move and 
have their existence, viz. : Is it in the nature of 
things possible that such a being could suffer any 
positive or final evil to exist in the universe, or any 
being to oppose or act in any wise contrary to his 
will, 03 permit anything to transpire that can of- 
fend him \ 



112 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 



CHAPTER XXL 

The last and most important question which is 
submitted for the consideration of the Church in her 
second estate is, as Ave have signified, whether the 
Christianity of Christendom is in harmony or in 
conflict with the attributes which herself for all 
these centuries ascribed to God ? And it is a pre- 
diction of our humble self that a reconstruction of 
that Christianity, restoring that harmony, would 
bring back that Church or Kingdom of God to the 
power and great glory of her first estate. 

The richest of the rich made infinitely richer, 
and the poorest of the poor made as rich as they, 
by their membership relation to Christ, and through 
him their filial relation to God. 

The infinite fact of that relation has been so re- 
peatedly illustrated and proved that we need now 
only to say, that all the riches of the rich is as noth- 
ing and less than nothing in comparison with a sin- 
gle share in the joint interest of the whole human- 
ity, in the thrones and dominions, principalities and 
powers of the universe of worlds. 

Now, therefore, what wait we for ? All the 
poor desire above all things to be rich, and all 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 113 

the rich desire to be richer ; why not declare to 
them both the whole counsel of God, and show 
them their clear record of title, as an earnest of 
their inheritance, to cheer them on their way whith- 
er they go to possess it ; for life is but a pilgrimage, 
and why should not the word of the Lord go forth 
from Jerusalem, the Gospel Church, and from every 
pulpit in Christendom, to the effect that the rich 
and the poor shall know and feel alike that the 
worlds are their own, and that the former are in no 
wise above the latter, save in the possession of more 
earthly wealth than they need, and which they soon, 
at the end of a short pilgrimage, must leave. And 
also that they may realize that they are fellow-heirs 
of the same inheritance and the same household of 
faith, and that there is no middle wall between 
them. 

The revelations of the next, as well as of the 
following periods, were higher and still higher man- 
ifestations of God and of his purposes and his good- 
ness. Instance his plain and audible words of 
promise to Abraham, that in his seed (Christ) all 
the nations and families of the earth should be 
blessed, and in the more perfect types given of 
Christ in the institution of the priesthood and sac- 
rifices under the law. The second period closing 
and the third commencing at the giving of that 
law, the latter, extending from that time to the 
coming of Christ, we designate the dispensation of 
prophecy. And by the priesthood, inclusive of 
Moses, and by that law and the prophets of that 
dispensation God revealed himself and his power 



114 THE PEAEL OF GREAT PKICE. 

and glory to a greater portion of mankind, and, as 
we have before remarked, in an increased ratio. 
That period, preparing the world for the Gospel, 
which was the last dispensation to the humanity, of 
the grace and glory of God. 

It is inferable, however, from the past that men- 
tal developments of certain portions of mankind 
were to continue for the enlightenment and general 
progress of the race. Witness the divine inspira- 
tion, as we conceive, of Luther and his compeers of 
the Reformation, by which they purged the Church 
from the spiritual wickedness of her high places ; 
and how much less than miraculous was the inven- 
tive power vouchsafed to the human mind in the 
nineteenth century, from which we have the appli- 
cation of steam as a motive power, to the endless 
variety of machinery, that saves the greater part of 
manual labor of the world, accelerating the accu- 
mulations of individual and national wealth in 
more than a threefold ratio. Increasing thereby 
the enjoyment of all mankind of luxury and ease. 
But the age of steam power is that also of the mag- 
netic telegraph, and of its unspeakable wonders, 
giving to dead matter motion and the power to 
convey thought with the velocity of lightning to 
the extent of its sphere, which is that of the earth 
and the air. And there are indications, such as the 
Atlantic cable, which render it humanly certain 
that such communication round and round the 
earth will very shortly be complete. And then, 
who shall be able to estimate the extent and in- 
crease of fraternal intercourse among all nations on 



THE PEARL OF GKEAT PKICE. 115 

the globe, and so prepare the universal heart and 
mind to receive gladly the pure gospel of love, em- 
bracing the whole humanity as a unit, " all mem- 
bers of one body and members one of another," 
and, as before stated, members constituent of the 
glorious spiritual nature and body of Christ, and in 
and with him God-born " before the world began." 
And then shall come to pass and be literally ful- 
filled the saying of Christ, that there shall be one 
fold (the whole humanity), and one shepherd, Christ. 
And then, and not till then, " shall nation cease to 
lift up sword against nation, and to learn war no 
more." 

Such, to our mind, are the signs of the times 
and we rest in hope " that the night is far spent 
and that the day is at hand." We are fully aware, 
however, that mountains of stereotyped errors and 
prejudices are to be removed — not by faith or fee- 
ble efforts, but by the Spirit of God, which shall in 
due time move upon the mass of those prejudi- 
ces, and the fleshly, insatiable lust for earthly ag- 
grandizement and power, which lust is the God 
of the world, " the prince of the power of the air, 
or world ; " the spirit or lust that worketh in the 
hearts of the children of disobedience to the law of 
love. And the Spirit will in due time teach the 
masses of men, as they were taught in and by the 
Church in her first estate, that their interests are 
one and indivisible, and their title to the wealth 
and glory of the universe, being a joint heirship, 
is one. 

We deem it of vital importance to the world, to 



116 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

know that it was a part of the divine economy to 
choose the nation of the Israelites, and to give them 
a law and ordinances, and thereby give them the 
knowledge of himself and of his gracious purposes, 
which knowledge was then being lost to the na- 
tions, who were much given to idolatry. And that 
the giving of that law and of those ordinances, to- 
gether with Moses and the prophets, and the Ora- 
cles of God, (that is, the history by Moses of the 
formation of the worlds and the promise of the 
Messiah,) was for the good of the Gentiles also, by 
preserving that knowledge in the world, and 
through that people to be extended throughout the 
earth. 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 117 



CHAPTEE XXII. 

"We now offer a comment on certain sayings of 
Christ, which are popularly believed to teach the 
eternal hell torments of all unbelieving and finally 
impenitent sinners. A prominent one of those 
sayings, to which we have before referred, is 
the parable of the sheep and goats, Matt. xxv. 
31-46. That parable is referred to and relied 
upon by the believers in endless misery to prove a 
future day of judgment, when Christ shall be the 
judge, and shall sentence the wicked, and shall send 
them away into everlasting fire prepared for the 
devil and his angels, and say to the righteous. Come, 
ye blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom pre- 
pared for you before the foundation of the world. 
Now we have only to refer to the record of which 
this parable forms a part to show that whatsoever 
was thereby foretold was certainly to come to pass 
before that generation passed away. The speaker, 
Christ, declared that he would come in the clouds 
of heaven with power and great glory before that 
generation should pass away. Chap. 24th. And 
then iu Chap. 25th he said, " when the Son of Man 
is come in the glory of his Father with his angels, 
he shall sit upon the throne of his glory and before 
him shall be gathered all nations, and he shall sep- 



118 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

arate them one from another," &c. Yerse 31. This 
evidence is conclusive, showing that whatsoever was 
meant by the ^gathering " of all nations before 
Christ, and their separation, " sheep from goats, 
and sending the latter into everlasting fire prepared 
for the devil and his angels, and the receiving of the 
former into the kingdom prepared for them from the 
foundation of the world," beyond question that " all 
was fulfilled before the then present generation 
passed away." And that simple fact proves that 
the parable is no evidence of any day of judg- 
ment, either in this world or that which is to come, 
other than, as above shown, during the generation 
then living. The sheep were the believing disci- 
ples of John the Baptist, Christ, and the Apostles. 

The fire was the suffering of the Jews, during 
and after the siege of Jerusalem. The devil and his 
angels were the Jewish high priest and the civil 
and religious rulers of the nation. Such- is our 
version of this parable, its figures and its charac- 
ters, which may pass with the reader for what it is 
worth. But the time and period of its actual and 
entire fulfilment is a matter of record, not to be 
disputed or doubted, which period certainly was 
eighteen hundred years ago. 

And the same is inferably true of the Parable 
of the Rich Man and Lazarus, being addressed to 
and spoken of the seed of Abraham only. The 
former, though in hell, was within speaking dis- 
tance of his Father, and could see the dead Lazarus 
in his bosom. His brethren had Moses and the 
prophets for their teachers. 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 119 

The Jews, therefore, were the only subjects of 
the good or evil indicated by that parable, which 
they alone were to enjoy or suffer, and no Gentile 
upon the face of the earth had in any wise any 
part or lot in the matter, except to eat the crumbs 
from their table. Neither had the Jews of any 
subsequent generation any more to do with or to 
fear from it than the Gentiles. Our interpretation 
of the parable, though of no authority, may throw 
some light on its design and purpose. We under- 
stand that the rich man was the Jewish nation, who 
were rich in the knowledge of the character and 
attributes of the true God, his laws, his ordinances, 
and his testimonies, and Lazarus was the Gentile, 
poor in knowledge of God, full of morally putrefy- 
ing sores, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, 
laid at his gate dependent on him for the crumbs 
of knowledge which fell from his table. Abraham's 
bosom was the Gospel Church, into which Christ 
and his angels (Apostles) carried the Gentiles. 
And the Jews have been seeking their Father 
Abraham eighteen hundred years, for a Messiah to 
save and restore them to their former power and 
glory. And Abraham tells them they would not 
believe him, because they rejected Christ, of whom 
Moses and the prophets wrote, and though he ac- 
tually went unto them from the dead. The five 
brethren may have been the dispersed Jews among 
the Gentiles. « 

And we pause here to say that if the Jews 
among all nations could understand and realize this 
glorious fact, they would embrace Jesus as the true 



120 THE PEAEL OF GREAT PRICE. 

Messiah, and his gospel as the word of the " God 
of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob." "We now 
offer a few remarks on some passages in the 
apostolic writings, which are popularly relied on in 
support of the dogma of endless sin and misery, 
which, to our mind, are susceptible of the same in- 
' terpretation we have given of the parabolic sayings 
of Christ. 

Paul speaks of the wrath of God as revealed 
from heaven against all ungodliness and unright- 
eousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteous- 
ness, which very clearly refers to the Jews only, 
as it is shown by the context, plainly designating 
the unbelieving portion of them, the subjects of 
that wrath and of the threatened punishment, and 
which was simply tribulation and anguish, which is 
temporal suffering only. And we hear nothing 
from the Apostle, here or elsewhere, about eternal 
damnation, or hell and its torments ; he speaks but 
once of the devil, and then only to say that Christ 
destroyed him, and death also at the same time. 
Heb. ii. 14. Peter speaks of him to the Jews only, 
simply as an adversary, which is the general mean- 
ing of the term. And Jude evidently means noth- 
ing more in his use of the same word. Peter i. 
5-8. — Jude ix. John says all sinners are his chil- 
dren, evidently meaning that they are unrighteous. 
1 John iii. 8-10. The name occurs frequently 
in the Apocalypse, but^n no case expressing the 
belief of the writer in the existence of a devil in 
the popular sense of that term. 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 121 



CAUSE AND EFFECT. 

The latter is necessarily like the former in its 
nature and character. God is the only cause — the 
universe is the effect. He is the only existence, the 
universe is wholly of him, was and is eternally in 
him. If God is good, so are all things in the uni- 
verse ; if he is infinitely evil, then is nothing 
good. It is, then, certain that positive evil cai* no 
more originate in God than darkness can proceed 
from the sun. ITow it must be seen by our readers 
that our illustrations of Bible truth have been made 
in sight of the above statement of facts. Inasmuch 
then as God is infinite in all his perfections, all 
that exists and all that transpires in the universe 
according to his will and purpose and under his 
economy, must ultimate in positive eternal good. 
It is not for finite wisdom to explain that economy, 
nor " the ways of God which are past finding out." 
The Bible is God's book, and must therefore be con- 
strued according to his character and his ways, 
when rightly understood. It is therefore true, 
strictly speaking, that there is not, never has been, 
anything done or existing in the universe that can 
ultimate in final evil. No such evil is to be feared ; 
of temporary evil the world is full — all pain is tem- 
porary evil, but final good. The world is sinful be- 
cause it is lustful. It must suffer for sin, and it 
must suffer death to destroy those sinful lusts. But 
we have shown before that all suffering is good, and 
necessary to perfect our final well-being. By the 
6 



122 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

suffering of death the sinful or suffering body gives 
place for the body in which suffering is neither 
necessary nor possible. 

This humanity has no possible positive evil to 
fear, but all possible positive good to hope for. The 
humanity has nothing to do but love, first its in- 
finitely lovable and loving Father in Heaven; 
second, his Son, as the brightest and most perfect 
manifestation of the Father ; and, thirdly, to love 
all # beings and all things, because God has made 
them all lovable. Love is the true motive to action. 
In all his acts, his government, and his word God 
has no other motive. God and Christ together 
formed the worlds, and in like manner they govern 
them in love. And such only is the true principle 
of all human government and laws. The framers 
of all governments and laws should see that every 
human being is alike the offspring of God, and that 
the highest honors devolve on those who are most 
devoted to the well-being of that offspring. Even 
the necessary criminal code of laws is no exception 
to this rule and principle. All infliction of suffer- 
ing should be fatherly chastisement; in no other 
character can they work reformation in the criminal. 
That such governments and laws will, in God's time, 
prevail in our world, we cherish a joyful hope, from 
the providential events and changes of the present 
century, which, to our mind, indicate accelerated 
growth in the knowledge of God and his works. 
But we look and earnestly long to see judgment 
begin at the house of God — (that is) the Christian 
Church of Christendom — when it shall be pro- 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 123 

claimed from her pulpit that the dogma of infinite 
eternal evil is nothing less than blasphemy, and is 
the father of all personal, spiritual, immortal, and 
almost infinite devils, and of an eternal hell and its 
torments, and of an eternal and infinitely wrathful 
and cruel Deity ; and that no such Deity can exist, 
no such torments or hell and devils were necessary 
to the salvation of a world, a humanity which God 
and Christ saved from all their sins, pardoned all 
their trespasses, and justified them by Christ's 
righteousness, and raised them up in him from the 
dead — and such proclamation would greatly relieve 
the world from the curse of a fear which hath tor- 
ment, and has tormented the nations since the ori- 
gin of the Oriental and almost universal philosophy, 
which was about seven hundred years before Christ. 
And Christendom itself has feared and felt those 
torments, which the writer knows are neither few 
nor small, but now desires humbly to express his 
thanks to God, whose gospel of love casteth out 
fear and doubts of a finally glorified humanity. 



FREE AGENCY. 

A word on the doctrine of free agency, which 
dogma we conceive to be simply a metaphysical 
subtlety — meaning that we have a moral power to 
choose and act that no other being, nor any circum- 
stance can control, and that that power constitutes 
a moral responsibility or accountability. Now this 
cannot be, because God is the only cause of all cir- 



124 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

cumstances, and he alone can control them, and all 
beings depend upon God for the continuance even 
of their existence, and of course for the exercise of 
all their powers. God is therefore the only free 
agent in the universe. Moral responsibility con- 
sists in the relation of mankind to God and to one 
another, and in the knowledge of that relation. 
Our responsibility to God is that of a child to a pa- 
rent, and of a creature to the author of his being, 
circumstances that control all finite beings and all 
their powers. 

FURTHER REMARKS ON THE CERTAINTY OF THE RES- 
URRECTION. 

A living man is a visible, tangible body, with 
visible organs ot the senses of sight, hearing,, tast- 
ing, and smelling, having feeling and strength, mo- 
tion and consciousness, and all these organs and 
powers are solely at the command, and do only the 
will of an invisible power, residing somewhere in 
that body, wiiile that organism exists, but when de- 
stroyed by disease and death, exists no longer, but 
remains in an unorganized and therefore inert state; 
and the dead organism having no longer sight 
or hearing, smell nor taste, nor knowledge or 
strength, turns to dust of which it was made. All 
these senses and powers were therefore in and of 
the living, immortal soul, and remain to be reor- 
ganized in a spiritual, immortal body, which exists 
in Christ, as the fleshly body existed germinally in 
Adam. 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 125 

Now all these senses being immortal and invisi- 
ble, an organization of them of a like nature 
and character is as certain in due time as the exist- 
ence of God, the author of the spiritual as well as 
of the fleshly mode of being. In proof of the 
certain existence of the human senses and pow- 
ers of the soul in the inert state, we refer to the 
fact of their total inertia in sound sleep. In a 
former part of this work we have shown very clearly, 
as we think, that the " saying that no traveller has 
returned from the bourne of the invisible world " is 
not true. It is clear and certain that Peter and 
John saw Moses and Elias, and heard them talk 
with Jesus, and it is equally true that Jesus himself 
rose from the dead and ascended to Heaven, and in 
a few days thereafter returned and announced his 
presence by the sound of a rushing mighty wind, 
which was heard and felt by his disciples, as well as 
the cloven tongues which he caused to rest upon 
the head of each of them. And that he afterwards 
manifested himself to Saint Paul, who received 
from his mouth a dispensation of the gospel and the 
assurance of the resurrection of all the dead, to the 
preaching of which gospel and resurrection Paul 
immediately devoted himself, as a martyr to Jesus 
and his gospel and the resurrection, pleading that 
truth as an established fact in his defence before 
Agrippa, showing it to be a literal fulfilment of the 
promise of God the Father, in which promise the 
twelve tribes had an unwavering faith and assured 
hope. And it is moreover shown from the infinite 
fact so clearly established by the teaching of Paul 



126 THE PEAEL OF GKEAT PKICE. 

(viz. : the oneness and inbeing of the whole human- 
ity with Christ, and thereby their filial relation to 
God), that in the very nature of things the offspring 
of God must inherit a glorious immortality in his 
presence, beholding also the majesty of the glori- 
fied Jesus. 

Attention ! ! ! the world, the whole humanity ! ! ! 
An El Dorado ! ! ! and a Philosopher's Stone ! ! ! 
both real, positive, true, and glorious ! ! ! Discov- 
ered about the year of Christ thirty-four, by the. 
Apostle Paul, the same being revealed to him by 
Christ, to be by him published to the world, togeth- 
er with the gospel of God's infinite love to that 
humanity or world. The El Dorado being no less 
than the universe of worlds. The Philosopher's 
Stone is the infinite love of God for every member 
of the humanity, which love will naturally and cer- 
tainly cause everything that can affect them to 
work together for their ultimate good. 

This stone, however, is that of the Christian 
philosopher only, and by that and no other philos- 
ophy it can be made available. And that philoso- 
phy consists simply in the truth of the gospel of 
the grace or love of God to all mankind, and 
a true and soul-satisfying faith in that truth is 
the gift of God. And here let it be clearly 
understood, ever remembered, and laid to heart, 
that such faith is given only in this wise, viz. : in 
answer to the earnest prayer of the hearer of the 
gospel and seeker after truth, and in all cases, and 
in all places, every such seeker after truth, and 
hearer of the gospel, has and will receive the spirit 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 



127 



of God's Son, sent forth into their hearts, witness- 
ing with their spirits, mentally assuring them of the 
presence and love of God their Father. Which 
mental assurance is a feeling in the mind, and a 
consequent responding of the heart to that infinite, 
paternal love. And that feeling of the mind and 
response of filial love to God the Father is no other 
than the Holy Ghost, which fell upon or came down 
upon the hearers of the gospel either upon the day 
of Pentecost, or at any other time, and in all places. 
Since that miraculous effusion of that spirit and 
that love, such mental assurance and feeling of 
the mind is (in New Testament phrase) regenera- 
tion and the new birth. And let every human be- 
ing and every sinner strive fully to appreciate the 
honor and glory conferred upon him by the audience 
or presence to which he is thus invited by the gos- 
pel, and admitted by the Infinite Author of the uni- 
verse and ever blessed God and Father of all man- 
kind. 

And let them rejoice also that every subject of 
such glorious faith is, by virtue of his inbeing one- 
ness with Christ, and thereby like his glorious head, 
a king to reign and a priest to offer spiritual sacri- 
fices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. 

It is also to be understood and remembered, that 
these recipients of gospel faith and subjects of such 
blessedness of communion with the Father and with 
Christ, are but a small portion of the human fami- 
ly, and they only enjoy the earnest of the heavenly 
inheritance — and that enjoyment pertains to the 
present life only — whereas the vast majority or 



128 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

non-recipients of that faith are, alike with the small 
number of the children of faith, positively and ac- 
tually heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ their 
head, of immortality and eternal glory. Such has 
been the infinitely wise and loving economy of God 
in all ages. And we have only to say, " Even so, 
Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight ; " and 
we repeat here that, according to our understand- 
ing of the Scriptures, those children of faith are 
scrip turally designated as God's elect, especially 
called and chosen. 

" I am very jealous for the Lord God of Hosts." 
These words were spoken by the great prophet 
Elijah, under the fearful apprehension of the de- 
parture and entire apostasy of the whole nation of 
Israel from the true God and his worship. They 
had broken down his altars and killed his prophets, 
and Elijah alone was left, and they sought his life 
also ; and had erected altars and were offering sac- 
rifices thereon to the idol god, Baal. "We also, 
humble as we are, and no prophet, are jealous for 
the character of the Lord God, not of hosts only, 
but of the whole humanity, whose name and nature 
is Infinite, and of whom that whole humanity is 
positively and actually the offspring, being the 
members of the body of his Son, whom he so loved 
that he sent him (his Son) not to condemn that hu- 
manity but to save and glorify it ; and .whereas, as 
we have shown that the popular creeds of Chris- 
tendom have for many centuries ascribed to that 
God of infinite and paternal love, infinite wrath, 
hatred, and vengeance towards the far greater 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 129 

portion of that offspring, and we cannot but hope 
that the time is not far distant when, as a whole 
body, the Christians throughout the world will 
endeavor to restore that character, by renouncing 
the heathen dogma, the accursed leaven, of in- 
finite evil and sin, and consequent eternal sin and 
misery. 

Now, therefore, let every human being, the 
poorest and most despised, turn all these ills and 
sorrows to the most fine gold, by a perfectly assured 
faith in God's infinite love to all mankind. And 
let it not be forgotten that in " all the days of old " 
there were poor saints who were believers in the 
same paternal love of God, and in his promise of a 
glorious resurrection through the Messiah, Christ, 
and who for their faith's sake, were " persecuted, 
afflicted, tormented, and wandered about in sheep- 
skins and goatskins, and dwelt in dens and caves of 
the earth." Holy women, too, were tortured, 
stoned, were sawn asunder, not accepting deliver- 
ance. " These all died in faith of a glorious resur- 
rection, noble martyrs to their faith, of whom the 
world was not worthy." And all poor saints, and 
others who are of like precious faith, " are the true 
children of light." And it is for them to cultivate 
an abiding assurance that in all time the paternal 
relation and love of God must necessarily direct 
and order all beings and things that exist, all events 
or changes in the universe, even to the " falling of 
a sparrow, or a hair from the head of the least of 
his offspring to the ground." And that God docs 
so continually direct them that they shall work out 
6* 



130 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

for all the offspring an exceeding and eternal weight 
of glory. 

Now it is justly and clearly inferable that such 
was the faith in God that Jesus earnestly and con- 
stantly sought to inculcate in all his teaching and 
preaching. Jesus knew the love of God extended 
to all creatures, and that he providentially cared 
for the daily wants and well-being of all, and ar- 
gued that his great love to his own children was the 
highest possible assurance that all they needed 
should be daily and continually supplied. And the 
general want of faith, even as a grain of mustard 
seed, in that love of God to mankind, as his chil- 
dren, was the source of the deepest regret to the 
Saviour, and the cause of constant solicitude and 
reproof even to his Apostles. We, however, learn 
from the record that faith was abundantly given 
after Christ's death, resurrection and ascension to 
the Father, and his return to earth on the day of 
Pentecost, by the miraculous effusion of the Spirit 
or Ghost of Jesus, and his power (which spirit and 
power were not given until Jesus had been glorified 
by his ascension to and acceptance by the Father, 
although that spirit had been made one with the 
person of Jesus, and Jesus with him, as was shown 
at his baptism). And it is clear from the record 
that the faith of the first Christians was as Christ 
had taught and enjoined in the days of his flesh, 
which was an unwavering reliance on God as well 
for daily bread as for their spiritual communion 
with him in the name of Christ their head, and for 
their resurrectional, eternal glory — which perfect, 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 131 

faith, and trust in their heavenly Father for the sup- 
ply of all their temporal wants is conclusively 
shown by their having all things (all property) in 
common, that each might share and receive alike 
the supply of his daily needs. Which were simply 
those of a pilgrimage, to bear them on to the pos- 
session and enjoyment of the inheritance that fadeth 
not away, and is reserved in heaven for the offspring 
of God, with their glorified head. It is perfectly 
consistent, however, with the exercise of that glori- 
ous faith, that the subject of it makes diligent use 
of the means which God has provided for the sup- 
ply of those needs and enjoyments, both temporal 
and spiritual, and also, if the will of God be so, 
that he may acquire and accumulate riches, both for 
his enjoyment and by which to do good and dis- 
tribute. It is essential, however, to the well-being 
both of the rich and the poor Christian that they 
cultivate meekness and lowliness of heart, after the 
example of their Lord and Master, and like him to 
trust their heavenly Father's love for the certainty 
of that well-being under all circumstances and at 
all times, " Things which are seen and things which 
are not seen." The former are temporal and visi- 
ble, the latter eternal and invisible ; the temporal 
or visible things are the external or outside of 
the eternal and invisible, the last remains to 
be seen by the eye of the resurrectional body. 
Reason perceives in the Scriptures, and histo- 
ry, and tradition, evidence of the certain exist- 
ence of those invisible things. There is a faith, 
however, which consists, as we have before shown, 



132 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

in a feeling of the mind or soul, and that feeling is 
to the mind what sight is to the natural eye, and 
which is the spiritual mode and medium of com- 
munion between God and our spirits, and that feel- 
ing is a perfect, joyful, mental assurance of God's 
presence and love. It is thus left for the whole hu- 
manity to estimate and determine the comparative 
value of earthly riches, which we are at all times 
liable, and at death certain to lose. It must not be 
forgotten, however, that such seeing and feeling is 
to be daily and earnestly sought for in that com- 
munion with the Father in which only it is enjoyed. 
But the glorious, infinite fact "remains, that all man- 
kind are thus rich and thus provided for by their 
heavenly Father, though they thus see and feel not 
in this present mode of being. 

Solemn and momentous truths, and questions 
which the Christians of Christendom, both Catholic 
and Protestant, are firmly held and bound by the 
cause of the whole humanity to consider and an- 
swer, viz. : The whole Christian Church believes in 
one God only — and that all things in the universe 
are of him, and through him, and to or in him, and 
move and have their being in him ; also, that God 
is omnipresent and omniscient, knowing and fore- 
knowing all things and events ; also, that he is in- 
finitely wise, and powerful, that his name and nature 
is love, and that he is infinitely good. Questions for 
the Church to answer : — If all things and beings 
are of and in God, can positive evil exist in the uni- 
verse i Is there any devil or any hell which God 
did not make and institute for the ultimate good, 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 133 

and not, as the creeds say, for eternal torment of 
the humanity, every member of which is his own 
offspring ? Cannot God cause all the wrath or sin 
of all mankind to praise him, and restrain the re- 
mainder of that wrath and sin? Did not God 
foresee and foreknow all the sin and temporal evil 
and their eifect in all time ? And is he not present 
in all places to prevent any act or the existence 
of anything contrary to his will ? Is it possible in 
the nature of things that an infinitely wise being 
could have brought into existence myriads of 
myriads of the humanity, his entire offspring, witli 
their head, Christ, with the purpose of glorifying 
them with immortality in his presence, and that 
he should also have created, or that a devil could 
possibly exist more wise than himself, and who 
he foresaw and knew would so utterly and totally de- 
prave and corrupt the whole race as to render them 
objects of his infinite wrath and curse, and justly 
deserving all the misery of this life, and the pains 
of hell forever ? and r furthermore, that the same 
being should again defeat the counsel of God for 
the redemption of the world by his Son through 
his death and resurrection % For it is a just in- 
ference from the teachings of the Christian Church 
of Christendom since the second century, that God 
and Christ will be able eventually to save and 
glorify only the few of the human family, while 
the many will be lost eternally through the tempta- 
tions of the adversary. If all that God and Christ 
can and will do to save the w r orld will leave those 
never-dying souls to suffer eternal torments, will 



134 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

not their counsel and purpose be defeated, to their 
infinite discomfiture and dishonor % and will not 
the infliction of those torments be alike the act and 
the will both of God and his adversary, and may 
not the latter claim his reward for his services? 
and will not the glory of that adversary be greater, 
in proportion of the many to the few, than' that of 
his Maker % And now, as to the nature aud inten- 
sity of those torments, it is certainly nothing short 
of writhing in flames of literal fire. Such is with- 
out exaggeration the teaching of the Church. 

Now we are horrified at suffering and pain in 
this life, and think it a great mercy that the subjects 
of it are relieved by death ; but the Christians 
of Christendom seem to be undisturbed in any 
enjoyment of life, while the many of the human 
race* are suffering the eternal torments of those 
flames ; they have bowels of mercy nearly or quite 
immovable in the former case, but none in the lat- 
ter. If those Christians realized the fact of such 
burning or torments in hell, as they do in this 
world, would it not render life itself a cruel bitter ? 
Is it not most charitable to conclude that the Chris- 
tian world try to believe it, but indulge a hope that 
it may not be true, and will never be realized ? And 
we believe it' to be God's mercy that the millions 
of Christendom have but little faith in that cardi- 
nal article of their creed, and we thank God, 
from all we can see and hear, that in all the Prot- 
estant churches, at least, that faith is growing con- 
stantly and beautifully less. We believe nine 
tenths of all intelligent congregations are the better 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 135 

pleased when Least is heard about it from the pul- 
pit, and the terms devil, hell, and damnation, which 
are becoming obsolete and offensive. And without 
that machinery it must be seen that the faith 
in question is null and void. Now these doubt- 
ing, though professed believers in endless sin and 
misery, will doubt more and more as they see 
its inconsistency, not to say its impossibility with 
the known character and attributes of God, and we 
think we see here the germ of revolution in the 
church, which will not go backward, but will in 
God's time explode and annihilate the cardinal error 
of the whole world, viz. : The existence in the 
world of positive or infinite evil and sin ; and when, 
in the good providence of God, that great event 
shall take place, the Christianity of the Christian 
world will be thereby reconstructed and rebuilt on 
the foundation of the gospel of the grace and love 
of God to the humanity, which is the spiritual 
house of God, and which is fitly framed together in 
his Son Jesus Christ, who is its chief corner stone 
and its glorious head. 

And why should not good and learned men, 
which abound in all the churches, propose and inau- 
gurate a world's convention, for the purpose of the i 
Christian world's reform, by purifying and purging 
it from concomitant error of the eternal wrath, ha- 
tred, and vengeance of God, vicarious atonement, 
substitutional righteousness, and endless hell tor- 
ments, by the extermination of these heresies from 
the Church, that the world may be wholly relieved 
from all fear of threatened punishments, or judg- 



136 THE PEAEL OF GREAT PEICE. 

ments, or a day of judgment yet to come, all which, 
as we have repeatedly shown, were addressed to, 
and affected none but the Israelites, and belonged 
exclusively to their legal dispensation, and were ful- 
filled and visited upon that people, and with that 
dispensation' passed away, to be known no more 
forever ? Let the Church, thus freed from the 
tares which were sown and have flourished in the 
field these seventeen centuries, turn to her strong- 
hold, the pure gospel of the infinitely forgiving 
mercy and love of God to the humanity, of which 
his Son is the head, in whom it pleased the Father 
that all the fulness of that humanity should dwell 
or exist, and with him be glorified. And then 
let her (for she is God's Church) strengthen the 
things that remain, viz. : her zeal for God, her 
works of charity and love, her conservation of the 
Bible, and her maintenance of the public worship 
of God. God grant and hasten it in his time. And 
that day is the more to be prayed for, inasmuch as 
it is obvious from the history of the Church since 
the second century, that she has in two very es- 
sential points failed in the fulfilment of her mission, 
in this wise, viz. : It was to be hoped that by her 
zeal and laboi* in publishing the gospel of peace and 
love, as well as by her example, to a great extent, 
if not universally, she would prevail with the 
nations to cease both to learn or practise war — 
but she has not only failed in her mission, but has 
both sanctioned and practised bloody and desola- 
ting war to this day. She is also justly chargeable 
with intolerance, bigotry, and persecution, and for 






THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 137 

these and other reasons there are many of her most 
enlightened members who perceive that her primi- 
tive glory has departed. The last but not least diffi- 
cult question to answer, which I ask at this time, 
demands of all theologians and philosophers, who 
believe that sin or sinfulness of man or other 
beings is contrary to God's will, why he does not 
prevent it— all admitting that he has the power ? 
We now close our Bible illustrations in a trium- 
phant and joyful assurance that God the Father 
and Christ the head of the entire humanity were 
one in framing the worlds, and that they are one 
and the same also in the government of them, 
and of all beings and things, and that such 
government will assuredly perfect the eternal 
glorification of that humanity. And we com- 
mit this humble effort to elicit the truth, at 
the age of fourscore and nearly nine years : cast- 
ing it upon the waters, hoping that it may in 
God's time (which we may not hope to see) re- 
turn as bread for the humanity of which we 
aspire only to be a member, and thereby the off- 
spring of God. 



SUPPLEMENTAL. 

Having in the foregoing work announced the 
momentous discovery of the Philosopher's Stone, 
by which the Christian Philosopher especially 
may turn all things to gold, and having short- 
ly thereafter had an occasion in our own expe- 



138 THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. 

rience to test the power of that stone, in a case 
of extreme pain and alarming illness, we sought 
and found in the sensible presence of God a 
triumphant assurance that our personal sufferings 
were, under the economy of infinite love and 
wisdom, perfecting us for ultimate eternal glori- 
fication. We offer this experience as our humble 
contribution to the already existing abundant scrip- 
tural and experimental testimony of the power of 
faith, and of the feeling in the mind of the pres- 
ence and love of God and of Christ. And that 
faith is the stone of which we speak. And we 
again take occasion to advert to the means pre- 
scribed in the Scriptures by which the entire hu- 
manity may avail itself of the power and glory of 
that faith, viz. : simply to call upon the name of 
God, as the Father, in the name of their glorious 
head, Christ. 

The natural, necessary, and certain effect upon 
the human mind and heart of the knowledge and 
belief of the gospel, is love to God and to Christ, that 
assurance of the gospel being to the world (the hu- 
manity) of the paternal love of God, and also of 
the love of Christ, as their glorious head. It then 
inevitably follows from the fact of that relation 
of Christ to the humanity, that the whole of the 
divine economy, commencing with the framing of 
the universe by God and Christ, must be none oth- 
er than that of infinite love and wisdom. And 
that its only object, end, and aim is the ultimate 
and perfect glorification of Christ, the head, and 
the whole humanity as the members of his body. 



THE PEARL. OF GREAT PRICE. 139 

And we repeat, without fear of contradiction, that 
all suffering and every enjoyment of all mankind 
work out for them an exceeding eternal weight of 
glory. 



THE END. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: April 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township. PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



(7.1 



